PAROWAN — In a special meeting Tuesday afternoon, the Iron County Commission voted 2-1 to certify the results of the June 25 Republican Primary election.
The dissenting vote came from Commissioner Paul Cozzens, who said he could not “in good conscience” vote to certify the results when more than 400 ballots weren’t counted because they were postmarked after the deadline.
However, Commissioner Mike Bleak said state law was “crystal clear” with regard to the postmark requirement.
“Any wiggle room that exists has to be within the law, or in other words, certification by the postal service that the ballot was received in the proper, allotted time,” Bleak said.
When the canvass discussion had gotten underway during the commission’s regular meeting on Monday, both Iron County Clerk Jonathan Whittaker and Iron County Attorney Chad Dotson had cited Utah Code Section 20A-3a-204 (2)(a), which states that mailed ballots must be clearly postmarked before election day, or otherwise clearly marked by the post office as received by the post office before election day.
Election Day was Tuesday, June 25, which means that ballots needed to be postmarked June 24 or earlier, as stated on the ballot instructions.
Tuesday’s canvass, which came on the last of the 14-day window allowed by state law, ratified the votes of more than 9,800 Republicans in Iron County who cast their ballots.
According to the final totals, just under half of Iron County’s eligible GOP voters cast ballots in the primary: out of 19,928 registered Republicans in Iron County, 9,826 valid primary ballots were counted, for a turnout of 49.3%.
Additionally, 404 of the ballots were cast in person (4.1%), with the remaining 95.9% voting by mail.
Whittaker noted that on June 27, his office received 429 ballots in the mail, more than 400 of which had been postmarked June 25.
“That was a very high number,” he said. “They were intermixed with hand-stamped envelopes showing a valid date and the mechanical 25th postmark.”
Of those 429 ballots, he noted, only 14 were able to be counted, as they had also been hand-stamped with a postmark of June 24 or earlier.
Whittaker explained that the U.S. Postal Service now sends all Southern Utah mail from zip codes starting “847” to Las Vegas to be sorted.
“Because of the maddening 340-mile journey all mail must take to the Vegas sort center and back, they were likely stamped after midnight, even though they entered the mail stream on the 24th,” Whittaker wrote in a strongly worded email to USPS officials, from which he read aloud when the canvass process began during Monday’s regular Iron County Commission meeting.
“This is unacceptable!” Whittaker added in his email. He went on to call for corrective action on the part of USPS, stating:
In this era of distrust in core American institutions, your performance has been subpar. Utah is an all-by-mail state for elections, and the Lieutenant Governor’s Office, as well as clerks’ offices around the state regularly defend the USPS. But you must make yourself defensible! My ability and willingness to defend the USPS is waning. Step up! You are failing us in something as simple as a timely postmark.
Cozzens said he and many other voters were unaware that the mail would be sent out of state before being postmarked. He said that during his more than three decades as a business owner, he typically mailed his quarterly state tax checks at the post office as late as 4:45 p.m. on the day they were due.
“I always knew, or always could count on the fact that they were postmarked by five o’clock,” he said. “That was just a given.”
During Monday’s meeting, Cozzens had shared several messages he’d received from angry and frustrated voters who were upset that their ballots weren’t counted.
“Legitimately registered voters, acting in good faith with the clear intent to submit their ballots on time, have substantially complied with our voting laws,” Cozzens said, adding, “These voters are willing to sign a sworn, notarized affidavit, and many already have, attesting that they did comply with election law.”
Multiple voters who spoke during the meetings said there was a “reasonable expectation” that mailed ballots would be postmarked in a timely fashion. Some commenters called for a return to in-person voting.
“This is the most important thing that we do as citizens in this country,” said Stephanie Hill. “For even one vote to be dismissed, it’s not acceptable.”
Another Cedar City resident, Tiffany Matthews, said, “There are very few things that I value more than the right to vote. And to be honest with you, this is my first and hopefully the last time I’ll ever trust the mail system for it.”
“I’m aware that we’re in a situation right here where it’s pretty hard to turn back the clock, but we have to make some changes going forward,” Matthews added.
Joining Bleak in voting to ratify the canvass was Iron County Sheriff Ken Carpenter, who was appointed to fill in for Commissioner Marilyn Wood, as state statute requires a minimum of three people to conduct a voting canvass. Wood was on vacation out of state and did not participate in either of the meetings.
Carpenter said he spoke with both the state Attorney General’s Office and the Lieutenant Governor’s Office in between Monday’s and Tuesday’s meetings and received an explanation as to why there is no room for equivocation in the wording of the law when it comes to the postmark deadline requirement.
“If the county attorney was given wiggle room to kind of pick and choose whether this vote counted or that vote counted, we’d have 29 counties each doing their own thing,” he said. “There would be no order to the vote. In order to protect the sanctity of the vote, the law has been put in place, specifically with no wiggle room for the county clerk or for us.”
“So as I reflected upon that, you know, it really occurred to me that there’s a lot more at stake here than the 400-plus votes of those people that I think were very sincere and doing their due diligence to try to get their ballots cast through the U.S. Postal Service, in appropriate time to be marked, but the U.S. Postal Service failed,” Carpenter said. “That’s the bottom line. The postal service failed our citizens. And, unfortunately, the way the state law is written, there’s no wiggle room for that.”
It was Carpenter who made the motion on Monday to postpone the decision by one day, in order to give county officials more time for additional research and investigation.
“I think this is a heartbreaking situation,” Carpenter had said on Monday. “We want our community to vote. We want them to exercise their stewardship, their right to vote. Yesterday, when Paul sent me copies of the emails, I was very, very much in tune with what he was saying and I appreciate that. Later, Chad (Dotson) sent out the specifics of the state law and state law is very clear that has to be postmarked prior to election day, and I’m not sure how we get around that.”
Carpenter said he also wondered if it was worth risking losing the 9,800-plus validly submitted votes on account of the 400 late ones.
Asked during Monday’s meeting what would happen if the county didn’t certify the results, Dotson said, “The likely outcome is that the Attorney General’s Office sues to enforce and compel the board of canvassers to follow the statute and certify the election, I guess.”
Bleak said on Tuesday that even sworn affidavits from voters stating when they mailed their ballots “would not be considered ironclad and probably wouldn’t stand up in court.”
“We are elected to govern and do so under the statute,” Bleak said. “We don’t create our own statute, nor do we get to choose what portion of the law we follow. The best way to govern is to follow the law and act in the direction of the law. And if we would like to see changes, then work on those changes at a later time.”
Cozzens said he doesn’t believe the remaining 9,800-plus votes would have actually been put at risk if the canvass vote had gone his way.
“I challenge that a little bit,” Cozzens said on Tuesday. “I don’t think any judge in the world would do that. I really don’t. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that would hold up, either.”
The previous day, Cozzens had articulated his position by saying, “The right to vote has been paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands who have come before us. Silencing these voices dishonors their sacrifices and undermines the democratic process. Therefore, I will not vote to certify this election until we have a clear path forward without silencing the voices of those who did their duty and mailed their ballots on time.”
Speaking to reporters immediately after Tuesday’s meeting, Cozzens elaborated further on why he voted nay.
“I’m not bullied easily,” he said. “I think these people who didn’t get their ballots counted, they did everything right. We owe it to them to look into this further.”
Cozzens said although he had hoped he and the other county officials could have been given more time to investigate the issue further before the state certifies the election on July 22, he at least thinks his dissenting vote will help send a message.
“Until we stand up and make an issue out of something like this, people don’t notice,” he said. “We pass this stuff, and in three weeks nobody remembers the way we go. And it happens again.”
Cozzens said he hopes the added publicity will help raise awareness among voters.
“The public becomes aware and they put pressure on their lawmakers and legislators and this gets fixed,” he said.
Cozzens said he’d like to see in-person voting become the default, with mail-in ballots being sent out on an opt-in basis to only those voters who request them.
Whittaker said that in order to try to somehow validate the time the late-arriving ballots actually entered the mail system, he drove to Salt Lake City and borrowed an ultraviolet scanner that can read the invisible code that’s marked on each piece of mail during the sorting process. Unfortunately, he said, that effort proved to be unsuccessful.
“There’s nobody who would rather count these more than me,” Whittaker said. “But I’m bound by law.”
Although a late postmark was the primary reason for invalidation for the vast majority of the 497 rejected mail-in ballots, it wasn’t the only reason, Whittaker noted.
“A number of ballots were rejected for other reasons,” Whittaker said. “Sometimes folks will drop their ballot in a ballot box without the envelope and the affidavit. And you know, we aren’t able to accept that because we can’t show that it was (signed).”
Bleak commended Whittaker and his staff for their diligence.
“Our clerk’s office has gone above and beyond,” Bleak said. “Like I said, this sucks. I mean, this speaks to the very fabric of our nation. At the end of the day, we’re a nation of rules, that’s governed by the rule of law. And in this particular case, the rule of law is very clear.”
During Monday’s meeting, Whittaker and deputy clerk Shaneal Bess went over the process, whereby the clerk’s office verifies each ballot and counts the votes marked therein.
Bleak said he was confident in the validity of the tabulations.
“We spent time auditing 100 of those ballots, as randomly chosen by the Lieutenant Governor’s office,” he said. “And we found that they were 100% correct in the way that they were counted.”
Bleak did note that there are occasions when election officials need to make judgment calls regarding the markings on the ballot.
“Basically, if there’s like, one circle colored in and then scratched out, and another circle colored in … those ballots are put into a separate file, and we look at those very closely to determine what the intent of the voter was,” Bleak said.
To help address the issue of mail delays, Bleak promised that secure 24-hour drop boxes would be available in time for the general Election Day on Nov. 5.
“We have the boxes. We have the equipment. They will be installed before the November election,” Bleak said. “That’s something that we can do to help mitigate this problem.”
During her presentation on Monday, Bess invited members of the public to come in and observe the tabulation and verification of ballots.
“I would actually love to see people come to our post-election audit and our logic and accuracy testing,” she said. “It is open to the public.”
Iron County’s final canvass numbers indicated that in the closely contested U.S. House District 2 race, incumbent Celeste Maloy ended up with 5,187 of the county’s votes (53.5%), while challenger Colby Jenkins received 4,508 (46.5%).
According to the Congressional district’s overall totals posted after the county canvasses were finalized on July 9, Maloy received 53,748 votes (50.10%) to Jenkins’ 53,534 (49.90%), a difference of just 214 votes. That’s close enough to trigger a recount, provided that the margin stays within 0.25% at the time of the statewide canvass on July 22.
To see a summary of all of Iron County’s final GOP primary numbers, click here.
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