Ballots await processing at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City as votes are cast in Utah’s primary election on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The Utah County clerk — who has been a vocal critic of voting by mail — is facing calls from state election officials to improve his office’s election processes after a state review of the 2024 primary found some of his staff were “too strict” during ballot signature verification, “resulting in unnecessarily challenged ballots.”
The review by Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson’s office also found other discrepancies that could have potentially allowed some 19 voters to cast their ballots in person without ID verification. Though state election officials did not go as far as to raise concerns about voter fraud in the report released this week, they wrote there’s no way to verify that because at some polling places, the county poll workers counted more ballots than they reported identifying voters.