After printer trouble, Utah County elections officials printing emergency ballots
Nov 5, 2024, 7:21 PM | Updated: 9:40 pm
A voter drops their ballot in a drop box during early voting for the upcoming general election held at the Utah County Health and Justice Building in Provo on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (Isaac Hale, Deseret News)
(Isaac Hale, Deseret News)
PROVO, Utah — Soon before the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Utah County Clerk had to resort to alternate measures to print ballots because the county’s existing printers use a type of toner that was no longer available.
“We thought we could get by this election sequence, but apparently we didn’t because there was such a great turnout,” Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson told KSL NewsRadio.
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Emergency ballots
There are measures in place when issues like this arise, according to Davidson.
“There’s a thing called an emergency ballot,” said Davidson. “So we’re printing some emergency ballots and taking them out there [polling locations]. They take a lot more tracking and a lot more work afterward, so we’re adding a lot of work to ourselves. But that’s why they exist, for this specific purpose,” he said.
Davidson told KSL TV that each location needing emergency ballots, received them.
“Everyone that has called us we’ve sent those out to,” he said. “It probably delayed the process a little bit … So people are probably going to wait a little bit longer. But we are actively making sure that everybody has what they need.”
Managers at a polling station in Payson, Utah, said they immediately called Utah County officials once they realized they ran out of ink. At that point, about 70 people were still waiting to vote.
Payson City Poll Manager Tiffany Harding told KSL NewsRadio that it was tense for a moment, but they got the problem resolved quickly.
“We were a little bit nervous … We were trying to move toner from one of the printers to the other one just to do whatever we could to be expeditious to the voters,” she said.
Harding said that due to fast work by her polling managers, a crisis was averted and no one was turned away.
High voter turnout
According to Davidson, part of the problem on Election Day could be attributed to a high number of people registering to vote on Election Day.
“Utah is one of the only states that does same day registrations. Maybe we need to … figure out a better way to get people to register early. If you let people procrastinate, they procrastinate,” he said.
When asked if he felt any responsibility for the large turn-out of in-person voters Davidson said, “I’m not going to refuse that responsibility. Yes, I have been promoting in-person voting. I’ve been promoting it. It hasn’t taken hold before, until this election. It’s like they were on a fast … now they want to feast.
“What it does show is that there is a great appetite for voting in person. Unfortunately, we underestimated that feast was going to happen.”
