Auditor review of signature-gathering boosts confidence in primary

SALT LAKE CITY — The review of signature-gathering in the Utah Republican Primary is complete.

State auditor John Dougall says his office’s findings show the three campaigns reviewed likely had more than enough signatures to get on the ballot. 

Signature-gathering under fire 

The signature-gathering process came under fire earlier this year when candidate for governor Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, raised concerns about signatures gathered by his opponent, Gov. Spencer Cox.

Cox defeated Lyman to win the right to represent Republicans on the ballot for governor this fall. Lyman won his bid at the state Republican convention and has argued he, not Cox, should be on the ballot. 

Lyman wanted to be able to audit the signatures himself to look for inconsistencies or problems. He initially filed a public records request for the unredacted names, addresses and signatures gathered by three candidates: Cox, Congressman John Curtis, who is running for Senate, and Utah Attorney General candidate Derek Brown. The lieutenant governor denied his request over privacy concerns. A certain percentage of voters signing those petitions opted to keep their information private and hidden from campaigns. 

After that, Lyman and his running mate sued state elections officials this summer. Lyman called for the removal of Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson. He also wanted the primary results overturned. The Utah Supreme Court denied his petition in August.   

Calls for an audit

Also in August, Cox called for an audit into the signature verification conducted by the Davis County Clerk’s Office. An outside county clerk’s office often performs signature verification or ballot counting as a neutral party in statewide races. 

At the time, Cox said an audit would show his signature-gathering was legitimate. 

“We believe this audit will confirm that proper signature verification laws and procedures were followed,” he said in a statement. 

In a statement posted to X, Lyman called the move “theatrics.”

“Announcing an audit of ‘the process’ is a smokescreen,” Lyman wrote.  

State auditor John Dougall announced his plan to review the signature-gathering that same day. However, he did not say whether his decision was a direct response to the request from Cox. Cox’s request specifically mentioned a “legislative audit.” The Office of the Legislative Auditor General, not the Utah state auditor, would perform any legislative audit. 

“Statistically likely” that Cox, others gathered enough signatures

On Tuesday, September 3, Dougall’s office sent a letter to the lieutenant governor detailing what they found by reviewing signature-gathering in the Cox, Brown and Curtis campaigns.  

State data shows Cox gathered 28,006 verified signatures out of the 28,000 he would have needed to get on the ballot for the Republican party. Brown had 28,004; Curtis had 28,006. The Davis County Clerk stopped verifying signatures after each campaign reached the required 28,000 signature threshold. All three campaigns submitted more signatures than needed. 

In the review, Dougall’s office looked at random samples of signatures to assess whether the clerk’s office properly validated signatures. Only registered voters registered as Republicans could sign support for Cox, Curtis and Brown. They also needed to live in the right area to vote for that candidate, and could not sign any additional petitions “for any candidate in the same race.” Elections officials also needed to verify that their signature on the petition matched their signature on voter records. 

Private voter information under scrutiny

The auditor’s office noted that around 40% of the voters who signed petitions for Cox, Curtis and Brown opted to keep their information private — slightly more for Cox, slightly less for Curtis. 

Because those signatures were less transparent to outside observers, they served as the focus for Dougall’s review. The team also reviewed signatures the clerk’s office didn’t validate, because the candidate already reached the 28,000 threshold. 

“Based on the statistical sampling of validated signatures within our primary sub-population of validated signatures for voters with privacy protection as well as consideration of the secondary population of uncounted signatures, we conclude that it is statistically likely each of these candidates met the statutory threshold of required valid signatures,” Dougall wrote in the letter to Henderson. 

“While this letter notes exceptions, this should not negatively reflect on the quality of work performed by Davis County Clerk’s office,” Dougall wrote. “Rather, the low exception rate indicates that they performed their validation duties with care and professionalism.” 

“A high level of confidence” 

A former Utah County clerk/auditor who now works to improve trust in the electoral process called the review itself unprecedented. 

“It’s actually quite impressive that the state auditor’s office would undertake such a review. I don’t know that something like that’s ever been done,” said Josh Daniels, director of Trust Utah Elections. 

Tuesday, Daniels went over the findings with KSL NewsRadio, describing them as a confidence booster. 

“It is statistically unlikely that the signatures were reviewed incorrectly,” Daniels said. “Here you have an independent review done by the state auditor’s office to confirm that the signatures were valid, they were correctly reviewed.” 

He said in particular, it boosts confidence in the work of the Davis County Clerk’s Office to review and verify signatures. 

“I think voters can have a high level of confidence that those petitions that candidates are submitting to become nominees [are] being done correctly according to the law,” Daniels said. 

Doing your own observations

Daniels’ organization, Trust Utah Elections, advocates for voters to be part of the process themselves as a way to build trust. He encourages voters to take advantage of opportunities to watch ballot counting, signature verification and other steps in the elections process.  

“There’s a lot of concern in the community about elections generally, and I think what voters need to understand is that they’re not trusting a ‘black box.’ They’re literally trusting their friends, their neighbors — people who are working in elections, who live in their community, their local elected county clerk,” Daniels said. “If they want to learn more about that process and actually see firsthand what’s happening, you can contact your local county clerk. You can go to the election office in your county and actually watch the process — you can watch the process of signature verification, you can watch the process of ballot counting, you can see how that works and who’s actually doing that work and sort of put a face to a name to the election system in your community.” 

Daniels said voters can also sign up for alerts through vote.utah.gov. Doing so emails or texts voters alerts about when the local clerk receives their ballot and counts it. 

“That ballot tracking service is provided for everybody in the state of Utah, in every county — and that’s insured by the state elections office under the lieutenant governor,” he said. 

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