Gov. Spencer Cox speaks with reporters during a news conference in Salt Lake City, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (Pool photo by Chris Samuels/The Salt Lake Tribune)
After a legislative audit revealed two votes cast in the names of deceased Utahns, opening the door for vote-by-mail critics to lash out against the system, Gov. Spencer Cox reaffirmed his support for mail-in ballots and his determination to oppose legislation that would shut it down.
However, Cox also floated the idea of earlier deadlines for mailed ballots in order to expedite counting and ensure Utahns would get their electoral results sooner.
“No, I don’t think we need to eliminate mail-in voting, but we should always be doing more to make it more secure,” Cox said Thursday during his monthly PBS Utah press conference.
The audit released earlier this month found no evidence of “significant fraud,” but did encourage better maintenance of the state’s rolls of 2 million registered voters, identifying 1,400 registered but deceased voters who hadn’t been removed. Criminal investigations are underway into the two ballots cast for deceased voters.
Utah election audit finds no ‘significant fraud,’ but raises concern over voter roll maintenance
Now, Utah’s election system that automatically sends by-mail ballots to all active registered voters could be in the crosshairs of Utah’s Republican supermajority in the Legislature.
House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, showed his frustration as the audit was presented to lawmakers, grilling elections officials and questioning how Utahns can have confidence in vote-by-mail elections.
Asked Thursday whether he would veto legislation seeking to dismantle the vote-by-mail system, Cox said he would need to see the details of any bills that surface, “but it’s highly unlikely I would sign a bill that completely eliminates mail-in voting.”
But when it comes to returning those ballots, Cox said perhaps the state should require that any voters using the U.S. Postal System should be subject to earlier deadlines in order to get their votes processed sooner and ease the burden on election administrators. Once the deadline has passed, voters could instead turn to in-person voting or secure drop boxes to cast their ballots.
“So I do think we can limit the scope of mail-in voting in a way that adds trust to the system and makes it easier for clerks to administer,” Cox said.
Delayed results
The governor, however, does believe the state needs to speed up counting and releasing election results in order to build trust with voters, pointing specifically to the amount of time that same-day voter registration takes.
Utah saw initial election results delayed for more than two hours as election officials waited until every person still in line when the polls closed had a chance to cast their ballot. Lines were especially long in Utah County, where an unforeseen surge in same-day voter registration and in-person voting led to long waits, and polling stations risked running out of ballot paper.
Though he didn’t refer to Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson by name, Cox said he doesn’t believe counties should be forced to use the same voting systems (Salt Lake County, for example, uses an electronic system for Election Day voting rather than paper ballots).
“We do need to fix the same-day voter registration, voting that takes a tremendous amount of time. It doesn’t need to take that much time. We can simplify that in a way that will speed things up,” Cox said.
He added, “You know, just because somebody failed at their job, I mean, and didn’t order enough paper and enough ink. I mean, that’s no reason to change an electoral system. It may be a reason to vote for somebody different for that position, but it’s certainly not a reason to change the way they do the balloting in that place.”
Signature gathering vs. caucus for candidates
Cox also stood by Utah’s dual path for candidates to get on the primary ballot, either through the caucus convention system or through signature gathering, and SB54, the law that created it.
Cox noted that SB54, long a target of some staunch Republicans, was a compromise that preserved the caucus system, which he supports. Cox himself lost at the party’s convention and he relied on signature gathering to qualify for the primary, which he won.
“Most of the major electeds in this cycle, including our new state senator, our attorney general, myself, showed that Republicans in the state were not the same as the delegates, and saw things very differently,” Cox said.
When it comes to signature gathering, Cox said he also supports changing the law in order to allow those signature lists to be released to the public in order to increase election transparency.
Following his loss, Rep. Phil Lyman, Cox’s primary opponent and the nominee chosen by Utah GOP convention delegates, has long claimed, without evidence, that Cox made it to the ballot thanks to fraudulent signatures. Utah law currently mandates that those signature lists remain private.
A legislative audit found that despite signature verification errors, Cox qualified for the primary. Meanwhile, Lyman went on to run one of the most successful write-in campaigns the state has seen, but still finished well behind Cox and Democratic candidate Sen. Brian King.
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