The DOJ is sending election monitors to Utah. The state's voters already trust the process
by Cami Mondeaux deseret news · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- The DOJ will deploy election monitors to Utah amid voter confidence in elections.
- Lt. Gov. Henderson welcomes scrutiny, ensuring no interference in the voting process.
- 77% of Utah voters trust mail-in voting; no significant fraud found in recent study.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah voters are overwhelmingly confident in the state's election process, new polling shows. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who oversees state elections, doesn't want that to change — even as the Justice Department said it will send officials to monitor the midterms next month.
Henderson was notified by the DOJ on Wednesday that the federal government would be sending election monitors to some jurisdictions in Utah to ensure a safe and accurate process. It's not yet clear how many monitors would be deployed or where they'll be assigned, although at least one is expected in Salt Lake County, Henderson said.
The monitoring comes amid a monthslong legal battle between Henderson and the DOJ over access to state voter records, but the top Utah election official says she isn't worried about the extra level of supervision.
"I welcome any kind of scrutiny that the administration wants to give to the state of Utah," Henderson told reporters on Thursday. "I am confident in our processes, and you know what? If they uncover some sort of problem, if we're violating someone's civil rights in some way, I absolutely want to know about it."
The federal oversight comes as Utah voters already express a high level of confidence in the state election process. More than three-fourths (76%) of Utah voters say they are confident the state and local government will conduct a "fair and accurate election" next month, according to a new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll conducted by Morning Consult.
Of those, 35% said they were "very confident," compared to 41% who said they were "somewhat confident."
Only 19% said they were not confident in the process, the poll shows.
Those numbers put Utah slightly above national sentiments, as 73% of U.S. voters said they were confident in their state and local governments to carry out accurate elections. Similarly, 19% said they were not confident, according to the poll.
Henderson maintained her confidence in how Utah administers its elections, telling reporters on Thursday that voters have several options to cast their ballots if they don't feel comfortable going to polling places with election monitors.
"If people are worried about going to an in-person polling location, they can fill out their ballots at home and drop them in a drop box," Henderson said. "And I encourage — the more people do that, the better. Because honestly, if we have more people voting early and getting those ballots processed early, we'll have more robust results on election night, anyway. So vote early."
Utah voters similarly have overwhelming confidence in the state's mail-in ballot system, which has been in operation in some capacity for over a decade. Beginning in 2012, counties throughout the state could opt in to the system — and by 2019, all counties implemented a mostly mail system, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Roughly 77% of Utah voters say they are confident that mail-in votes will be counted "as intended" by state officials compared to just 17% who said they were not confident, according to the Deseret News poll. Only 6% said they didn't know.
A recent study commissioned by the state legislature also found "no evidence of significant or widespread fraud" in Utah elections as well as no increase in fraud when states adopt a mail-in voting method over in-person voting.
The study, which was released this week from Utah Valley University's Gary R. Herbert Institute for Public Policy, analyzed comprehensive national voter fraud databases — identifying 2,276 cases of voter fraud between 2000 and 2019 nationwide.
Only 51 of those were reported in Utah, and all occurred during the Daggett County mayoral election in 2006.
When it comes to specific elections, Utah voters express more confidence in local jurisdictions than statewide or even federal races.
While 78% of Utah voters say they are confident in local elections, just 75% said the same about state elections — and that number falls even farther to 62% for federal elections.
State elections would refer to races such as governor, lieutenant governor and members of the state Legislature. Federal elections include members of Congress, who will be on the ballot this midterm cycle.
Other states face election monitors
Utah is not the only state to be sent election monitors in November. At least five other states have similarly been notified of election monitors being deployed, including Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Texas and Washington.
Henderson acknowledged the process is not necessarily uncommon, but told reporters it hasn't been done "to this scale and scope" before.
"I'm always worried about people feeling intimidated about voting, I don't want that to be the case," Henderson said. "I'm trying to help the public understand that while the scope and the scale of this is maybe not normal, the fact that election monitors from the Department of Justice go to states every election year is normal, and I think that they probably won't even notice."
Henderson said she received assurances from the Justice Department on how monitors can conduct their business, including guarantees the officials cannot "intrude or interfere in any way in the voting process," according to the notice obtained by the Deseret News.
The monitors will dress in business casual clothes with no uniform or pins identifying themselves as DOJ. However, they will be "forbidden" from talking to voters inside polling places and they will not be armed.
"Our elections are safe and secure. They are also run by thousands of individual humans, and there's always some sort of a human error or some element of surprise that pops up," Henderson said. "That's expected in every single election, and when those challenges occur, the poll workers, the county clerks in my office are always quick to jump on that and make sure that we solve those problems in advance."
"Nothing ever goes 100% perfectly, but they go as perfectly as they possibly can," she added.
The poll was conducted Oct. 13-20 of 875 registered Utah voters with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points, and a poll of 2,050 registered U.S. voters, with a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.