State Auditor John Dougall says this year’s primary election had some hiccups that need fixing — including county clerks sending the wrong ballots to some voters, not truly ensuring ballots always are secret, and giving short shrift to some third parties.
He outlined his concerns in letters Tuesday to Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, who by law is the state’s top election official, after members of the auditor’s staff closely watched election processes in three of the seven counties participating in the Aug. 15 congressional primary.
Dougall said in an interview that his office began monitoring the activity after Utah and Wasatch counties publicly acknowledged they had sent the wrong ballots to some voters in the 3rd Congressional District primary, and “we wanted to better understand how that happened so we can avoid the problem in the future.” In the case of Utah County, 68,000 unaffiliated voters received ballots that are meant only for registered Republicans.
The counties sent ballots to the wrong voters in part because they did not fully understand the intricacies of Utah’s Voter Information and State Tracking Application (VISTA) database, Dougall said, and made improper queries to it to generate lists before mailing ballots.
Dougall wrote that one of the counties — presumably Utah County — took steps sufficient to guarantee all improperly cast ballots were not counted.
But in the other, apparently Wasatch, “steps were insufficient and resulted in ballots of multiple unaffiliated voters being counted for the CD3 primary. However, it appears that these errors did not affect the final outcome.”
Dougall said in an interview that auditors identified about a dozen ballots that had been counted improperly in that one county. Auditors figured that in the worst-case of all improperly sent ballots being counted in that county, that would not have changed the outcome of the congressional race.
His letter to Cox adds, “We believe these errors could have been mitigated by process and system improvements at the state and county level,” and he called for such action.
He noted some other ballot problems, too, including one person who newly registered as a Republican did not receiving a GOP ballot because of technical issues with VISTA. Also, some people living outside city boundaries received municipal ballots in two cities — but Dougall wrote that problem was caught for most people involved, although two people cast ballots that were counted.
Dougall also said some minor parties may be put at a disadvantage by wording on provisional ballots — which may be requested on Election Day by such people as those who were registered elsewhere in the state previously but have moved to a new address.
He noted that in two of three counties sampled, envelopes list options for seeking a ballot for the Democrat, Republican and Constitution parties, or unaffiliated or “other.”
He said options are not specifically included for the Libertarian, Independent American or United Utah parties, even though the first two “have party membership well in excess of the Constitution Party, which is listed.”
He added, “We are concerned with the disparate treatment of political parties on official election materials.”
Dougall also expressed concern that ballots may not always be secret, as required by law.
“First, an individual’s votes may be visible through the return envelope with or without the assistance of backlighting” in some counties, he complained. “It would be possible for anyone handling the return envelope to link an individual voter to that voter’s specific votes.”
He said security envelopes or sleeves could remedy that.
He also said state law requires depositing the by-mail ballots, once verified, into ballot boxes “without unfolding it or permitting it to be examined.” He said his staff saw two poll workers violate that — but they had no reasons to suspect they revealed how anyone voted to others.