‘Deseret Voices’ Episode 50: The truth about federal control over state elections

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson learned this week she is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for refusing to turn over sensitive voter information to the federal government.

The news came in a letter from the agency’s Civil Rights Division.

“As you are aware, you are currently under investigation and ongoing litigation as to the extent to which you have failed to comply with your duties under the (Civil Rights Act of 1960), as well as the National Voter Registration Act ... and Help America Vote Act of 2002,″ stated the letter, which Henderson posted on social media Wednesday.

On this episode of “Deseret Voices,” Henderson joins McKay Coppins to talk about voter registration rolls, the laws that regulate them, what the Justice Department has asked all 50 states to share, and why she has not complied.

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McKay Coppins: Lt. Gov. Henderson, thank you for coming on Deseret Voices.

Deidre Henderson: Happy to.

MC: I want to start by asking you about this letter that you received from the Justice Department on Wednesday. The letter said, “As you are aware, you are currently under investigation.” And your response was basically, “Actually, I was not aware.” What happened here? Were you literally finding out that you were under investigation from that letter?

DH: Yes. Well, we’ve received numerous letters from the Department of Justice over the past year about specifically voter rolls, right, and getting an unredacted copy of our state voter rolls for the Department of Justice. And there’s a legal dispute there. In none of those letters did they say that we were being investigated for anything. So, yeah, that was the first time I’d actually heard anything about an investigation. It was news to me.

MC: Since receiving that letter, has anyone at the DOJ explained to you what exactly you’re being investigated for?

DH: No. No, we’re just left with maybe some suppositions, but no one has clarified anything.

MC: The letter warned specifically that failure to preserve records could expose you to civil or criminal sanctions. How seriously do you take this? I mean, you said that you chalk this up to essentially harassment of election officials. Do you think that they might actually try to criminally charge you if you don’t comply with what they’re asking?

DH: Well, there’s a couple of things. I think they’re trying to remind election officials of federal laws that require us to preserve records from an election for 22 months. That day was up over the weekend. But also, yeah, I think there is a measure of — I don’t know why else you would write to an election official, a statewide official, multiple times, and tell them that they’re under investigation or remind them that they could go to prison for violating certain federal laws. We know what the federal laws are, and we follow them. And where there is a disagreement as to what the law means, which there happens to be in this particular case, we work that out through the court system.

MC: Let’s talk about that disagreement. What specifically is the Justice Department trying to get? What information are they trying to get that you don’t believe the state of Utah should provide them, and why?

DH: The Justice Department has asked all 50 states and the District of Columbia to provide an unredacted copy of their voter registration rolls. Now, voter registration rolls contain a lot of information about a person. And voter registration rolls in all 50 states are publicly available, but only certain portions of it, right? Not your driver’s license, not your Social Security number, not your full date of birth. There are things that we hold back and are required by law to protect as private from people on those voter rolls. But the Department of Justice didn’t want the publicly available version; they wanted the full, unredacted version, and we don’t see what the basis or purpose of them asking for that is. And if there’s no valid legal reason to give it to another government entity, we’re prohibited by law from doing so.

MC: The burden should be on the Justice Department to establish why they need this information, right?

DH: Exactly. Is there a certain voter that they’re — if they were investigating a certain voter for some reason and they needed information on that voter, and they provided us with a warrant or, you know, other things that they needed, we would comply with that. But why do they need this information on every single voter in America?

MC: Well, can I ask you why you think they want it?

DH: Well, it’s been really unclear. At first, they said they only wanted it to make sure we were following federal laws requiring us to maintain our voter rolls, meaning make sure that dead people were removed from our voter rolls and the people who moved were removed from our voter rolls. But then as time has gone on, more and more things have happened that make us question whether that’s really what they want it for. Now it’s pretty clear they want a nationwide, centralized national voter registration, and that’s just — that’s simply not OK. I mean, it’s certainly not legal. There’s nothing in federal law or in the Constitution that allows them to do this.

MC: Yeah, I feel like this is an important point to drill down on, because I think a lot of people who don’t follow these issues closely, they hear some of the messaging coming out about voter fraud and election security threats, and they say, “Well, what’s so wrong with the federal government having a database of every voter to make sure that there aren’t people who are undocumented immigrants or, you know, in other fraudulent ways, people voting, right?” Like, there are people who, without knowing that much about the constitutional implications or the law, would say it sounds like a common-sense idea. What would you say to those people?

DH: Well, the U.S. Constitution gives the authority to choose the time, place, and manner of elections to the states. The states have that authority. The federal executive branch does not. Congress has some authority. Congress can pass laws to kind of override states, and they have done in the past. There are states that have, you know, made it hard for certain people to vote historically, and Congress has passed laws to make sure that eligible voters’ access to the ballot is expanded. But the Constitution is pretty clear: This is for states. One of the challenges with our election system is also its greatest strength, and that is that it is run by thousands of individual jurisdictions around the country. It’s very decentralized. That’s a good thing. It is not a flaw; it’s a feature. It does present some challenges because not everybody does things exactly the same way, but you have all of these decentralized locations. It makes it really hard to manipulate an election. You get that all centralized in one spot, makes it pretty dang easy to manipulate things.

MC: What do you make of the motivation behind this administration talking constantly about security threats to the election? I mean, the president a couple months ago gave a big nationally televised address where he said that our election security is at risk. What followed that was a series of initiatives and policies, including some threats to election officials throughout the states, basically amounting to an effort to nationalize these elections. So, what do you think is driving that? I mean, I know you probably don’t want to speculate too much, but you’re right in the center of this. You are the chief election official in this state. You must have some idea about what’s going on here.

DH: Well, from my perspective, it doesn’t matter what the motivation is. It is not legal. It is not constitutional to centralize elections. And no matter who is in the White House, no matter what party is trying to take over in certain ways and federalize elections, states and election officials need to stand up for what’s right and for the Constitution, and for federalism, and for making sure that we follow the Constitution, federal law, state law, and we preserve those guardrails. So I don’t think it matters what the motivation is. Some people could think the motivation is good. Some people could think the motivation is bad. Doesn’t matter. It’s not legal.

MC: Well, you could ask the same question about the Trump administration’s efforts to limit mail-in voting. Do you think that — you know, Utah has been doing mail-in voting for a long time, longer than most states. Do you think that the president is simply mistaken about the potential insecurity of mail-in voting, or is there something more kind of insidious going on here?

DH: Look, again, I can’t speak to anybody’s intentions or motivations, but I can say that the effect of what is happening is not going to have a positive outcome. I don’t see how you can say you want more secure elections, more secure vote-by-mail, and then insert this really complicated, convoluted, extralegal, and unconstitutional process to interfere with who a state can or can’t send a ballot to. The two things don’t gel. You can’t say on one hand you want more security and then work on the other hand to make it less secure. It will make it less secure. And at the same time, defunding, you know, not providing us with the resources that we used to have. We used to get intelligence briefings; we don’t get intelligence briefings anymore. We used to get all of this support by the federal government to help us make sure that we’re running secure elections. We don’t get that anymore. So it’s really hard —

MC: When did that stop?

DH: Under this administration.

MC: Why?

DH: Well, that’s a good question.

MC: That’s fascinating, because, you know, this administration has made efforts to secure elections a centerpiece of its midterm messaging. You’re saying that you are getting less help from the federal government than you used to in ensuring the integrity of elections.

DH: Absolutely. Not only are we getting less help, we are getting continually harassed and interfered with, which takes us away from doing our jobs. It takes us away from the actual work of administering elections. It’s a lot of work. It’s busy. It takes a lot of time. It’s very complex. There’s a lot of moving parts, and when we have to constantly be defending the process and countering lawsuits and accusations and all of these things, it makes elections less secure, not more secure.

MC: When you shared this letter that you got from the Justice Department on X, Sen. Mike Lee responded to your post by saying, “Election security is an actual problem,” because you had said you wished that the Justice Department was focusing more on actual problems. What’s your response to him?

DH: Look, Sen. Lee is doing his job the way he sees fit, and I am doing my job the way I see fit. I am a believer in federalism. I am a believer that we should be following the Constitution and state and federal law, and if we don’t like state or federal law, we should change it. And if we have a hard time getting certain bills passed, maybe we should revisit some of those policies and figure out what we can get passed and what will get the support of the majority of Congress.

MC: Are you surprised to see so many Republicans who are ostensibly, you know, constitutionalists, federalists themselves, proponents of states’ rights, supporting the administration’s efforts to remove authority from the states to nationalize elections?

DH: That’s why I say it doesn’t matter what the motivation is, because if we’re OK with Republicans nationalizing elections, with Republicans foisting their own opinions not through Congress, but through executive order on the states, and through bullying and intimidation tactics on the states — if we’re OK when Republicans do it, and we’re not OK if Democrats do it, then we’re hypocrites, and we can’t talk. And I think that we should stop being hypocrites.

MC: You’re in an unusual position here, certainly in the state of Utah. You know, there’s an enormous amount of pressure on you from the Trump administration, but also from the National Republican Party, from conservatives and Republicans in your own state to just go along with what this president is asking. What is it like to find yourself in the middle of this controversy, to be the constant recipient of this pressure and to kind of refuse to back down? What has it been like for you?

DH: Well, you know, it’s not always easy to feel like you’re doing things that might be unpopular with the people that you respect, right? But at the same time, I’m the only chief election officer in the state of Utah. That role is mine for the next couple of years, and nobody else has that duty. I have that duty. This is my responsibility to bear, and if I can’t bear it, then what am I doing here?

MC: I’m curious, as we move toward the elections, there’s obviously a lot of anxiety about election security. There are probably a lot of people in the state of Utah who are hearing the message coming out of the White House, coming from maybe some conservative media about widespread, rampant voter fraud, about the potential to corrupt mail-in voting. What do you say to them? How worried should they be about election security in Utah?

DH: Well, every time I face challenges, I like to try to think of them as opportunities. And one of the really good things about the many, many challenges election officials throughout the country have had over the past few years with this kind of constant barrage of attacks and accusations, what we have done is we have looked at our systems from top to bottom. Legislatures have passed laws. Our legislature has passed laws. We have continually improved our processes. We have strong, secure elections. We did before, but they’re even better and stronger now. And we’re not going to let any federal interference interrupt the processes. This year, voters can expect that they will get their ballots in the mail. I am fully confident that we will be able to keep that particular Postal Service rule at bay, at least for this election. They will get their ballots in the mail, they will be able to securely return those in the mail, they will be able to or in the drop boxes or vote in person. Their ballots will count. They can count on that. And if they really have questions, they can go tour their county clerk’s office. They can volunteer to be a poll worker. They can go — all of the ballot counting, the tabulating, the auditing that we do in elections is all open to the public, and I invite anybody who has any questions or is even just curious to go watch and to participate. I think they’ll come away with a greater understanding and a greater confidence and respect for the process.

MC: If we get to November and a prominent political leader, a Republican or Democrat, claims that an election was stolen, what evidence should an ordinary voter demand to see before they believe that claim?

DH: Well, I think there is a process for disputing an election, right? There absolutely is a process for contesting an election in every state. And if there are actual concerns and questions, you go to court and you lay out the evidence. And short of that, we have never seen any of these claims of election interference or ballot stuffing or anything — we’ve never seen any of those claims win out in court. So I think people, if they hear that, first of all, it has become very popular now for losing candidates to cry foul — you know, heads I win, tails you cheated, right? And so who is claiming fraud? Closely contested elections, elections where a winner only wins by a handful of votes, those are harder, you know, and it’s easier for people to question that. But again, there is a process to contest elections, and it’s through court.

MC: If somebody wins an election here in Utah and the president or leaders of your party claim that it was stolen, and you look into it and you see no evidence of it, are you prepared to stand up and say that they’re wrong, if necessary?

DH: Of course, and we’ve had to do that before. We’ll do it again.

MC: I am curious, just to bring this conversation full circle, you know, you get this letter from the Justice Department. Clearly, the intent is to intimidate and threaten. You know, whether you agree with them or not, I don’t think I’m making a speculative statement — there’s an obvious motivation there. Was there any part of you in that moment that thought, “Maybe we should just try to make this go away,” or did you immediately say —

DH: No. Look, I don’t take kindly to bullies. I never have, and I’m not going to be intimidated into doing something that I don’t think is right. I will say I was at book club when I opened my email and saw that.

MC: What book?

DH: It was “The Goldfinch.”

MC: Oh, yeah. Big one. Lots of people love that one.

DH: We meet monthly, and I was sitting at book club the other day, and I opened up my email and I saw that, and I just — it was a little bit distressing for a while until I was able to talk to some of our folks and lawyers and feel better about it. But yeah, it’s not going to — no, I’m not going to be intimidated into compliance with something I don’t believe is right.

MC: Finally, your message to Utah voters as we approach November: what do you hope they keep in mind as they are preparing to vote themselves, as they’re hearing — you know, they’re reading about this standoff between the Trump administration and their lieutenant governor, what do you want them to know?

DH: There’s no standoff. I mean, look, my job is to oversee elections, to enforce state and federal law when it comes to elections. That’s what I’m doing. The Department of Justice, the administration, and I have a disagreement. I’m not alone, by the way. There are a lot of states that have a disagreement here, too. And there’s a process to work that out, and that’s through court. We have a disagreement on this issue. It doesn’t mean we have a disagreement on every single issue. This is one that — it’s a big one, but we have a disagreement on this issue, and we’re going to work it out. And I am confident that the state of Utah is on the right side of it.

MC: Lt. Gov. Henderson, thank you for doing this.

DH: Thank you.