ST. GEORGE — Frequent questions to the Washington County Commission from constituents about election security prompted a presentation from the County Clerk/Auditor’s Office on Tuesday.
The County Commission chambers were packed with people as Washington County Clerk/Auditor Susan Lewis and Elections Clerk Melanie Abplanalp began to share details on the county’s election process and how much of what they did was governed by state law and not county code.
As to what prompted the questions about election security that led to the presentation, Lewis said she believed it was connected to social media and email chains that focused on voting irregularities and claims of voter fraud in other states related to the 2020 presidential election.
“I think there were concerns mostly over social media and emails that went around with problems that happened in different states,” Lewis told St. George News following the commission meeting. “Just because it happened somewhere else, it doesn’t mean it happened here.”
The emails and other materials shared online, such as the election fraud claims pushed by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell’s cyber symposium, for example, fueled concerns that county officials hoped to help alleviat.
“We were happy to try and answer those questions and concerns and help them understand what we really do,” Lewis said. “In Utah, it’s much different than other states.”
Among the answers from the county clerk/auditor that drew applause from some in the commission chambers was the fact the county did not use voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which have been mentioned as having played a hand in voter fraud by some parties who believe the 2020 election was rigged.
None of the machines used by the county are connected to the internet either, Lewis said, adding that Utah law prohibits this.
When it comes to in-person voting, it is all done through paper ballots. While voters still use a machine to input their vote, it still counts the vote on a paper ballot that is then collected by the county at the end of the day.
“Paper ballots are very auditable,” Lewis said.
She and Abplanalp then began to provide a general breakdown of the election process and what the county does to combat potential cases of fraud or irregularity in its vote counting.
In relation to voter rolls, the county keeps those as clean as possible so only individuals considered to be active voters end up receiving a ballot in the mail.
Efforts to ensure the rolls are clean include someone in the office who reviews obituaries so that they make sure deceased voters are removed. Individuals who have moved out of the county are also checked via a national change of address report the county pays for every six months.
“We want to make sure inactive voters do not receive ballots,” Abplanalp said.
And, as only active voters receive mail-in ballots, the county does not engage in mass voting. This was another point that drew a favorable response from some in the crowd.
Concerning mail-in voting and the counting of those ballots, the county has several redundancies in place meant to catch any potential problem.
Counting machines are checked before and after the election and members of the public are encouraged to witness the process.
“Come and watch, come and participate, come and volunteer,” Washington County Commission Adam Snow told the crowd. “It will be an illuminating thing for you.”
Signatures on mail-in ballots are also scrutinized and if an issue arises, the voter is contacted by the Clerk/Auditor’s Office in order to address and correct the problem.
When cases of voter fraud occur in the county, Abplanalp said, it usually involves someone signing a ballot for somebody else. This typically involves parents who may believe they are able to sign a vote for a son or daughter who may be away at college or on a church mission.
Overall, Abplanalp said the elections in Utah are secure and the laws governing them have been crafted by the Utah Legislature over many decades. It is not a recent and untested practice.
“We can account for all our voters,” Lewis said.
Voter privacy is also highly guarded, Lewis said. Under state law, the counties lock away the voting results for nearly two years following an election and can’t touch them.
This can be an irritant for groups wishing to gain access to voting records via a GRAMA (Government Records Access and Management Act) request, she said, adding the secret ballot is protected under the Utah and United States constitutions.
During the meeting, Commissioner Victor Iverson noted that the county had been put on a map as an example of a place that over-voted, or produced more votes than there were voters. From what he understood, the data used to make the map hadn’t taken the county’s increasing growth into account and was based on outdated population numbers.
Iverson went on to say he believes the county’s vote-by-mail system is a secure one and encouraged the public to come and talk to the county if they had any questions or suggestions about the voting process.
“Washington County wants to engage with you,” he said.
Part of the Clerk/Auditor’s presentation included slides from what Lewis said was a larger presentation that went over an hour. This presentation should be posted to the county’s website at some point in the future for the public to view, she said.
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