As expected, Rep. Celeste Maloy’s Republican opponent Colby Jenkins has officially called a recount in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District primary.
Jenkins announced on X that his campaign formally requested the recount, given the 214-vote margin separating him and Maloy was within the required range for a recount under Utah law. The lieutenant governor’s office confirmed to Utah News Dispatch on Monday that it received Jenkins’ request.
Official election results showed Jenkins trailed Maloy by just a fraction of a percentage point — 0.2% — with 49.9% to Maloy’s 50.1%, or 53,534 to 53,748 votes.
“Five weeks ago on election night, we were down nearly 2,000 votes, and now here we sit at 214,” Jenkins told Utah News Dispatch on Monday during a phone interview, noting that as more ballots trickled in leading up to the county canvass, he continued to close the gap on Maloy until the margin hit recount territory.
For a losing candidate to be able to call a recount, Utah law requires a margin of equal to or less than 0.25% of the total number of votes cast. According to official election results, 107,282 ballots were cast and counted in the 2nd Congressional District race, putting the required recount margin at about 268 votes. Maloy’s slim 214-vote lead positions the race well within recount range.
That 214-vote margin is the same as three weeks ago, when county officials across the state canvassed and certified their election results.
That day, Maloy declared victory. “214 votes is pretty close, but it’s about 213 more votes than you need to win,” she said. Though she acknowledged Jenkins was likely to call a recount, she said she didn’t expect “that a recount will change the outcome.”
Jenkins, at the time, said he planned to call a recount and responded with this statement: “I’ve been in a lot of battles in my life, victory isn’t something you declare. You win it, or you don’t. Let Celeste declare victory, and we will win it.”
On Monday after Jenkins officially called the recount, Maloy issued a video statement saying it came as no surprise, and “my team is prepared for this.”
“I want to make sure that every Utah voter has a high level of confidence in our election system, the integrity of our elections, and that their votes will be counted,” she said. “So we’re going to watch this play out.”
She added she has a “really high level of confidence in our county clerks and their staff. They do a really great job verifying and checking all the ballots.”
“So we’ll watch this recount play out,” she said, “but I’m confident that the final result will be the same.”
Jenkins said he, too, has “confidence in our election,” but he again pointed to concerns his campaign has raised about ballots that have been disqualified because they missed the postmarking deadline under Utah law, which mandates vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked no later than the day before Election Day.
Jenkins’ campaign estimates about 1,300 ballots across multiple counties, but concentrated in southern Utah counties where he had significant support like Iron and Washington, were disqualified because they missed the postmarking deadline, even though Jenkins said he’s heard from multiple families — “entire households — that said they put their ballots in the mail well before the June 24 deadline.
“There are hundreds of voters whose votes were disqualified because of what we call the ‘Vegas cancellation,’” Jenkins said, referring to some ZIP codes in southern Utah where mail is processed in Las Vegas before being sent back to county clerks.
The issue especially stirred frustrations in Iron County, where one commissioner voted against certifying the election. The other commissioners ultimately voted 2-1 to certify, but not without heartburn over nearly 500 vote-by-mail ballots that were not postmarked on time and disqualified. Many of those, county officials worried, should have been counted but weren’t due to mail being routed through Las Vegas.
Though Jenkins’ campaign officials previously floated the possibility of addressing the postmarking issue through a recount, Jenkins told Utah News Dispatch on Monday that they anticipate attempting to remedy the issue through a separate legal challenge — by contesting the election through a petition filed with the Utah Supreme Court.
Jenkins said it’s likely that filing to officially contest the election will come Tuesday. He has until the end of the day on Aug. 1, or 10 days from the election certification on July 22, according to the lieutenant governor’s office.
In conducting a recount, state law requires county election officials to recount all ballots cast in the race and re-examine all uncounted ballots to ensure they comply with the law. Given Iron County officials expressed frustration about not being able to count the late-postmarked ballots but ultimately voted to certify because state law is clear they can’t be legally counted without a postmark before Election Day, it’s unlikely that a recount will result in a flood of previously uncounted ballots.
A recount could, however, possibly uncover some discrepancies.
Now, Utah law allows election officials seven days to carry out the process.
“At the end of the day, while we certainly want to win, our overarching goal is to make sure that every legal vote gets counted,” Jenkins said. “Let’s say we get a legal ruling in favor of our petition and those late postmarked ballots are counted. Well, while we certainly hope and want to win, if the results are still the same then it’s still a moral victory because those ballots were counted.”
At least one legislator, Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, told Utah News Dispatch he’s interested in running a bill to allow more flexibility for rural counties around the postmarking deadline — but he and legislative leaders weren’t inclined to intervene or change the law in the middle of this year’s election process. Now that question is before the Utah Supreme Court.
Jenkins said lawmakers have been aware of this issue before this year’s election, and it’s something that should have been addressed. If his campaign is ultimately not victorious, he said he’s grateful his race with Maloy highlighted the issue.
“We’ve got to fix this. We’ve got to investigate it further, before we disenfranchise hundreds of our voters,” he said.
He also issued a call to Utah voters who may have had their ballots disqualified because they missed the postmarking deadline to get in touch with his campaign.
“We would love to hear from them,” he said.
Written by KATIE MCKELLAR, Utah News Dispatch.
Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: [email protected]. Follow Utah News Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.
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