ST. GEORGE — It was a packed house Tuesday evening as the Washington County Republican Party’s Central Committee set to choose the new county clerk/auditor in a special election.
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Members of the Central Committee and Republican Party filled a conference room at the Best Western Abbey Inn Hotel in St. George for the event. Former Clerk/Auditor Susan Lewis resigned last month due to her family moving to Iron County, triggering a need for a special election to be held that night.
As Lewis was a Republican, state law mandated the Washington County Republican Party choose her replacement. Among those who filed to fill the vacancy were Marlee Meyers, Brett Tolly, Larry Mulcock, Tim Taylor and Ryan Sullivan.
Sullivan, who had been acting as the interim clerk/auditor since Lewis’ departure on May 17, won the special election with 55.9% of the vote in the first round.
Party rules state that if a candidate gains 50% plus one of the votes, they win. While 50% or below requires a second round of voting.
“Ryan Sullivan is our new county clerk/auditor,” county Republican chair Lesa Sanberg announced as the vote totals were displayed from a projector.
Out of 204 votes from the Central Committee, Sullivan took 114. Meyers garnered 43, Tim Taylor had 40, Mulcock had seven and Tolly received zero.
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While cheers and applause erupted in the conference room, some members of the Republican Party expressed displeasure with the results. A number of those had shown support for candidates who shared a view that the county needed to move away from using machines in the voting process and demanded hand counts be used instead in order to have what they say would be fair and secure elections.
Concerns over the county’s elections process have been a recurring theme of public comment at Washington County Commission meetings since the disputed results of the Republican primary election for House 72 race last summer.
“Elections – I take them very seriously,” Sullivan said as he spoke to media following the special election. “However, the scope of where you can operate with election law is pretty narrow, so it’s limited on what a clerk/auditor can do and not break the law.”
The Utah Legislature sets the state’s elections laws, which leaves little room for counties or municipalities to deviate from what’s been established as state code. However, Sullivan said he does believe some laws could be changed for the better.
“My No. 1 goal is to operate within the law and if the laws happen to change, we will follow the law,” he said. “That’s the one thing I can promise Washington County – is that I will follow the law. Some of the laws, I think, need to be worked on and changed, and as soon as they are, I will put it on the books and follow them to the letter.”
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Acknowledging the concerns some residents have about the integrity of the elections process, Sullivan said he has put some new policies in place while serving as the interim clerk/auditor and will now move forward with them.
In the county’s ballot processing center, he had additional cameras installed for surveillance and also had wireless network cards removed from the laptop used in the processing center. Sullivan said he will also move ahead with conducting hand count audits of ballots at the precinct level to make sure machine tabulators are working correctly.
“It’s not going to please everyone,” he said, adding that the county will be using a new machine that will be able to tally ballots at the precinct level and will aid in simplifying the overall elections process – especially if there’s a need for a recount. Instead of having to go through tens of thousands of ballots, going through them at the precinct level will lessen that to 1,200 or fewer, Sullivan said.
“Some people don’t trust machines, and I get it,” he said. “’Machine’ is kind of a swear word in elections right now. We have a (new) machine that will sort the envelopes (mail-in ballots) as they come in down to the precinct level.”
While much attention has been given to the county’s elections process since last summer’s primary election, Sullivan said 90-95% of the clerk/auditor’s job is tied to finances and accounting. This involves working with the County Assessor’s Office on setting the county’s property tax rates, preparing and managing the county’s annual budget, along with additional services like providing passports and marriage licenses for county residents.
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“It’s something I’m excited to do and to keep serving the public,” Sullivan said of his continuing work at the Clerk/Auditor’s office. “I’ve gotten some great support and some hate mail, so we’ll take it all in and roll with it.”
Before being elected as the new clerk/auditor, Sullivan worked in the clerk/auditor office since March as the chief deputy. Prior to that, he served as a division manager in the County Assessor’s Office where he worked on property taxes. Overall, he’s worked for the county for nearly 20 years. He has a degree in accounting and also is a certified general appraiser.
Sullivan will be sworn into office Thursday morning by a member of the County Commission.
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