announcer: Funding for the "Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

Jason Perry: Tonight on the "Hinckley Report:" as 2024 nears, Utahns weigh in on their confidence in our elections.

Party delegates from across the state gear up for their conventions with long standing and contentious proposals.

And as controversial issues once again land in the Supreme Court, Utah's leaders weigh in.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Good evening, and welcome to the Hinckley Report.

I'm Jason Perry, Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week we have Sam Metz, reporter with the Associated Press; Lindsay Aerts, reporter with KSL NewsRadio; and Greg Skordas, attorney and political commentator.

So glad you're with us tonight.

This is gonna be an interesting week in politics, what's happened, what we're going to see this weekend, and I want to start by what many people are talking about now.

It is our elections.

We're starting to see candidates come forward, who are we going to vote on?

And what is connected to that really is, do we have confidence in our system, our voting system and our votes being counted?

Greg, I want to start with you for just a moment, because something big on the national level with real local implications, Fox News has settled this week with Dominion Voting Systems and agreed to pay $787 million for claims from Fox News about those voting systems.

Talk about that so we can get at this local level.

Greg Skordas: Well, Jason, it was just on the verge of the trial starting.

I mean, the jury was selected, they were all there, they were about to do their opening remarks, and, as you know from practicing law, I mean, sometimes cases are literally settled at the courthouse steps, and that's what happened here.

A lot of people were really surprised that, that Dominion settled, because they had asked for $1.5 billion or $1.6 billion, and some people actually felt that they'd settled kind of low.

To me, $787.5 million is a significant settlement.

It's a significant amount of money, and it shows a lot, and I think Fox, more importantly, didn't want the bad publicity that probably would have come from having people like Rupert Murdoch testify on the stand, Tucker Carlson testify on the stand to some things that would certainly be embarrassing to them.

Lindsay Aerts: And I think to that point, some people wanted to see those people on the stand, right?

They wanted Fox News to have to explain themselves for why they made some of these claims, why they reported these claims, and the case was really going to center around, did they report these claims knowing they were false?

And that's significant for a media company, right?

And as I looked at this settlement come down, I mean, I think it's the second largest settlement in US history and-- Jason Perry: You mean for this kind of claim, but--Lindsay Aerts: Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, for a defamation claim, excuse me.

But I just went internal with it, because I'm a journalist here locally on a much smaller scale, and I just was like, am I making sure that when I talk to lawmakers, the claims that they make, if I know they're false, what do I do with that?

You know, it just really gave me pause as a journalist to make sure that I'm reporting accurately, fairly, checking my biases at all times.

Jason Perry: Well, let's get to that for just a second too, because it's unique to have a couple of members of the media here.

In Fox's statement, Sam, I was kind of curious about how you look through this lens here when Fox said that this settlement reflects their continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.

They kind of connected their settlement to that.

Talk about that through the lens, as the media, how you see your responsibilities, in particular when you were reporting on stories like this.

Sam Metz: Well, I think everyone knows that we're in an environment where suspicion or distrust in elections is at a very low level.

So, I think as Lindsay said, it's very important to go slow and check claims that are being made by sources and write them and report them fairly and accurately.

If they're false, we call them false at the Associated Press.

Jason Perry: When you were interviewing people, and you've done some great reporting too, Sam, when you are doing your reporting, what is your sense of Utahns and how they feel about their votes and about the election process?

They trust it?

Sam Metz: So, Utah is an interesting state, because it's the only red state in the country that has a universal vote by mail system, and counties started adopting a vote by mail system long before the 2020 election when it became newly politicized in a different way.

So, with voters I've talked to in Utah across the political spectrum are very confident in voting by mail, and I think that's reflected in the Hinckley Institute's polling as well.

When you ask a broad question about trust in elections, people have some suspicions, but when you ask them about their state and local officials, they tend to be more confident.

Greg Skordas: There is some irony, Sam in the notion that Republicans have--in terms of the nation really been concerned about vote--mail in voting and have found that to be problematic, when, as Jason just said, one of the reddest states in the country has been using mail in voting here in Utah for, I think, 20 years, and with huge success.

Of course, Republicans win here, so they don't complain about it, but in other states they're like, well, that's fraught with the potential for fraud and misuse and that type of thing, but it--we haven't had--we haven't had problems in Utah.

I'm not aware of really any sort of systemic complaints about mail in voting in Utah ever until this last session when people are like, well, maybe we should revisit that.

Jason Perry: Go ahead, Lindsay.

Lindsay Aerts: Well, I just think it's a good thing that people trust elections, right?

Especially here locally.

Our state lieutenant governor's office has done a really good job to kind of dispel the messaging that was coming from the top down, led by the same party that the lieutenant governor belongs to, right?

And so, they've really tried to get out there and make sure that there's transparency, make sure there's trust in elections.

I know that only one county in Utah, Salt Lake County, uses Dominion voting systems, and so there wasn't a huge swath of machines here in Utah in order for us to question, so that could be where it didn't totally translate here, but there were claims of fraud in Utah, and at every turn the lieutenant governor's office dispelled those.

Jason Perry: Greg, I want to ask you this question because you brought it up here about where Utahns are, because we have done some polling on this, and I want to ask you about this one in particular, because it does break down by party, as you suggested.

This--we started in this--this is the 2021 cycle is when we started asking this question, whether or not there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, 41% of Utahns said yes, 49% said no, but to this is--to your point, if you can just articulate this a bit, among Republicans, 65% of Republicans said yes, 96% of Democrats said no.

Greg Skordas: So, it just tells me something that's really sad, Jason, and that is, there's still a lot of people that are buying into what we all are calling the big lie.

I mean, it is a lie.

It's untrue, I mean, Fox all but acknowledged it, and I thought their settlement letter was kind of goofy.

They were like, well, you know, we--we're--we're--we're gonna take the high ground here, we're gonna settle this case.

But a judge found that they lied.

A judge found in a summary judgment motion that they had lied, that they had gone out of their way to lie, and it was Dominion's job to just prove how much their damages were.

So, there wasn't widespread fraud.

It just didn't occur.

And I don't understand why people are still buying into that narrative.

And it's sad, especially anyone in Utah shouldn't think that because we've had such high integrity with our voting systems here.

Really, we have.

And so, I mean, even nationally, everything that was--all these lawsuits were filed around the country to try to debunk certain states's findings were all thrown out, almost universally, every case was tossed.

Jason Perry: Lindsay, our last thing on this, because I thought it was interesting.

Sometimes you get reactions from our local elected officials, even some conservative ones.

I thought it was interesting, Senator Mike McKell put out a tweet almost immediately after saying there's--this is 787 million reasons not to believe everything you see on Fox News.

Lindsay Aerts: Yeah, he kind of said the quiet part out loud, didn't he, right?

A lot of Republicans watch Fox News, and to Greg's point, I think their settlement letter was really interesting to say, we acknowledge the claims that the judge determined were false, right?

And so, the question we'll never really have an answer to, because we didn't see this thing go to trial, is did they knowingly--did they knowingly report these claims knowing they were false?

However, with their settlement, you can kind of draw connections there if you want to.

But, yeah, just bringing it here locally, some of our, you know, we have a very conservative legislature, we have very conservative members of our state, and clearly this is a channel that they probably subscribe to, and to see one from their own party kind of questioning it is interesting.

Greg Skordas: It'll be interesting, Jason to see if anything changes at Fox News, to watch how their coverage goes from this point forward, because their ratings are to the point where maybe they can afford a $787 billion--million dollar settlement every once in a while, because everybody's watching them anyway.

Lindsay Aerts: But they still have other lawsuits coming.

Jason Perry: Oh yeah, they still do.

Before we leave the voting, Sam, just one final point here.

There were 36 bills proposed this last legislative session dealing with voting, 13 of them passed, but one of them in particular was an increased number of audits of voting around the state.

Just really quickly talk about that and how that will instill confidence even further in Utahns.

Sam Metz: So, there--since 2020, election bills have always been just a prevalent part of the legislative session, and the ones that tend to be more drastic in nature, like to roll back the vote by mail system, tend to fail in committee in the House.

And the ones that do pass the Republican super majority legislature are ones that tend to be focused on transparency and accounting and don't mess with the structural dynamics of the vote by mail system.

So, audits are one of those.

Lawmakers and state officials like Lieutenant Governor Henderson have been very supportive of audits, but it is important, Jason, to note that there are different kinds of audits.

So, the Cyber Ninjas forensic audit that we saw in Arizona that was widely criticized is not the kind of audit that state officials are proposing to do here in Utah.

And in Utah they've been doing audits since long before 2020.

Lindsay Aerts: And they audit different sections of the election process, right?

They audit signatures, they audit the voter rolls, they audit--there's other things they audit, right?

So, specifically those individual processes, and then they audit the whole system.

Sam Metz: It is interesting in the legislature to see the divides within the Republican Party on these election bills, with more moderate center right Republicans kind of defending some components of the system and some on the other side of the party spectrum calling it into question.

Greg Skordas: I think the audit will give the voting more integrity.

I think the voters need to see that every once in a while, an aggressive audit to come out and the results of that published so that the voters can feel like, hey, somebody's looking after this and making sure we're doing it right.

Jason Perry: Voting--oh, sorry, go ahead, Sam.

Sam Metz: Well, I wanted to say last year in April I went to this tour of a ballot center in Provo in Utah County, and we got to see the signature verification machines, the ballot sorting machines, and when I talked to voters, they were very confident after seeing this kind of system in place up close.

And I know a lot of counties are doing this.

But then after asking them questions about their confidence and their local county government system, when you ask some people questions about the broader election, when you ask people broader questions about elections, that's where they start to be less trustful.

Jason Perry: We're gonna continue talking about voting with a big event happening this weekend on Saturday.

Start with you Lindsay, on this.

The Republicans are meeting, their state convention, they're at Utah Valley University on Saturday, and we have a couple interesting proposals coming forward from the group.

Talk about two of those, because one of them really gets to voting again.

Lindsay Aerts: Yes, so one of them will deal again with SB54, and I say again, because delegates have done this in the past.

They don't like the bill that requires the dual path to the ballot.

Jason Perry: Signatures or convention.

Lindsay Aerts: Signatures or convention.

I just operate, "But everyone knows what SB54 is."

That's not true.

But this dual path to the ballot, we know delegates don't like this, and so a resolution has come forward again to say we will not support candidates--we will only support candidates who go this grassroots delegate route.

We will not support other candidates.

What's interesting about this is the party already does this.

The party already withholds the party support, which looks like, you know, their discounted tax rate for mailing and their different types of voter lists and the data that they have with the RNC, stuff like that, the party already withholds that for candidates who don't get 60% at convention.

So, when I talked to the state party chair, the current one until tomorrow, Carson Jorgensen about this, even he was like-- he called it the definition of insanity, because he didn't understand the goal here.

We already do this.

And so the question I have is if this resolution passes, what has to happen is the state party, the central committee has to make it a bylaw of the party, and it's already a bylaw.

So, will they take that bylaw further, right?

To say we are going to further punish signature gathering candidates.

Meanwhile, while all of this is happening, you have Count My Vote out there this legislative session who vehemently, again, for the, like, eighth year in a row defended the signature path to the ballot, and did so the threat of an initiative as well.

They have money behind their cause to say we're going to defend this path at all costs, and so you have the party going in there and kind of saying we still don't like this, and you have Count My Vote saying we're going to defend this at all costs, and it will be interesting to see how far the Republican delegates take this, if this resolution passes.

Greg Skordas: Isn't there a notion that the conventions are really--the people that come to the convention, that the delegates are not necessarily representative of the party?

I think that there's a feeling that in the Democrats, the people that show up at the convention are pretty far out there, and the Republicans the same way.

I'm not saying it's specific to one or the other.

And so, what comes out of the convention--that the candidate that comes out of the 60% convention is not necessarily representative of the party, because the rank and file don't really show up at the convention, so the alternate route, the signature route is the way to avoid the problem.

The problem with that, of course, is then some people don't even participate in the convention.

They get their signatures and they're on the ballot, they're good to go.

And so, there's some frustration there too, because then the conventions are going, well, why are we here?

So-and-so has already got the-- already got the signatures, they're gonna be on the ballot anyway.

My vote's not gonna matter for much.

Jason Perry: Talking about the candidates that resonate with the people who show up to these conventions for the Republicans and the Democrats, Sam, what do we make of who's coming to this one?

We have Mike Lee and--Senator Mike Lee and Governor Cox both coming.

Senator Romney is not going to be able to come to this one.

He says he has some family commitments.

Sam Metz: Yeah, I saw Lindsay had that story yesterday, great story.

Jason Perry: Talk about that in a second, Lindsay.

Sam Metz: So, Governor DeSantis is the headliner.

Senator Romney is not coming, which continues a long standing pattern of skipping these kind of events.

Senator Lee is coming, and one of someone who worked for him is gonna become the party chair.

So, these conventions tend to, as Greg said, for both parties sway toward the party faithful and less towards the general primary voter.

Greg Skordas: Don't you suppose that's why Romney doesn't go?

Because the far right, the people that are there representing that part of the party are not big fans of Mitt Romney.

Lindsay Aerts: And if we're gonna say the quiet part out loud, Senator Romney doesn't need the party.

He's got enough name ID, he's got enough money to gather signatures to get on the ballot.

He--everyone in the state knows he's a Republican, even though he pushes back on some of the more conservative at least rhetoric of the party, right?

But he still votes conservatively, so I even said that to the party chair.

I said, "I don't mean to be disrespectful, but Senator Romney doesn't need the party," and he agreed.

Greg Skordas: But he's still got to get through the primary.

Lindsay Aerts: Yeah, he does.

Greg Skordas: He's still got to get his name--if he's on the ballot in November, he's a shoe in.

But what about the ballot in June?

Sam Metz: And this is really a good curtain raiser for this battle of the Republican party question facing Utah.

There are candidates like Governor Spencer Cox and Senator Romney who don't necessarily perform as well at these conventions, and there are other candidates kind of who are more favored by the party activists who go to them.

So, we'll be able to see some of those dynamics taking shape this weekend, I hope.

Jason Perry: So, Greg, can we get to these dynamics for a minute?

Because it's gonna be very interesting.

Governor DeSantis is going to be headlining this event.

He's going to be introduced by Senator Mike Lee.

The convention is going to be run by his, Mike Lee's, state director, Rob Axson, so it's gonna be very interesting.

Talk about that headliner as it relates to the people who are there, as it relates, potentially, to the rank and file voters in the state of Utah.

Greg Skordas: Well, welcome to politics, Rob Axson.

I mean, he's jumping in, and he wanted this position, and, by all accounts, he's going to be great as party chair, but--and the DeSantis thing seemed like a no brainer.

I mean, he's very popular among Utah Republicans.

He's almost certainly going to be the front runner once he announces his run for the 2024 presidential election.

And, of course, the Republicans have said he's not here to campaign, but the faculty at UVU has issued some flyers and some statements critical of him coming, which makes me think they probably would have criticized anyone.

I mean, Jason Perry: really, it's a little bit sad, although, I mean, people are entitled to their opinion, but there's some people down there at the university, they're not happy with Ron DeSantis and, I mean, he's the governor of Florida.

It's not like he's some person that's unheard of that has some strange agenda.

I mean, he's, like I say, he hasn't announced for president yet, but when he does, he's going to be in the top two.

Lindsay Aerts: Well, I think the issue was with some of the flyers that they use swastikas on Ron DeSantis's face.

Greg Skordas: They called him fascist.

Lindsay Aerts: Yeah, in order to promote that event, and that just rubbed some people the wrong way.

I know Rob Axson also took issue with the fact that these professors weren't encouraging diversity of thought, right?

And kind of chastised them for just indoctrinating, I think is what he said.

Greg Skordas: And irony that that's happening in a university, right.

We're not--that we're not inviting that dialogue.

Lindsay Aerts: Yeah.

Sam Metz: It doesn't really surprise me that people on a college campus oppose a leading potential presidential primary contender for the Republican party.

I do think that it's interesting that this early on there are potential candidates like Governor DeSantis or Mike Pence, who came and spoke at UVU last year, who are coming here.

This is a state where LDS voters have historically polled somewhat skeptical of Trump, so I'm wondering if some of these other candidates for 2024, or I should say potential candidates, see an opening here in Utah, which is a Super Tuesday state.

Greg Skordas: Wait, not in Utah.

I mean, after the--I mean, the important Republicans issued a letter, I mean, the big names of the Republican party issued a letter basically begging DeSantis to run, so he's, in my opinion, Sam, he's going to do very well in Utah.

Now, that's with the--with the party leaders, but maybe not with the people.

Jason Perry: Well, our polling, to your--to both your point, Lindsay made a comment about this, in our recent polling, Deseret News with the Hinckley Institute of Politics, 21% of Utahns at that point said they would vote for DeSantis compared to 16% for Donald Trump.

Lindsay Aerts: Well, and I think to Greg's point, coming from the top down of the Republican leaders in the state, that is pushing that message.

I even spoke with Governor Spencer Cox yesterday about what his conversations with DeSantis would look like, and he said, "I'm going to encourage him to run for president."

So, the governor really wants Ron DeSantis to run.

The governor says that he has seen how DeSantis leads on the ground, and what he did with hurricanes, building roads, building bridges, that's where his leadership is important to Cox.

I pushed him a little on the fact that Florida is having a gas shortage right now and DeSantis is taking a little bit of pressure for not being in the state, being accused of campaigning, quote, unquote, while his people in Florida are struggling to find gas.

Governor Cox just said that, you know, they--that governors have to balance that national obligation with the needs of their local state, and governors have to do that all the time, so kind of defended him there.

Jason Perry: Yeah, and Greg, all this leads into these approvals, how people feel about these candidates.

That's what we're measuring over time.

And before we leave this convention that's coming here, I want to talk about Senator Lee and Senator Romney very quickly.

Just how Utahns are viewing them to see if, you know, test Lindsay's assertion here.

This is how it broke out.

So, this is approvals of Senator Mike Lee.

This is just this last month, 47% approval of Mike--of Mike Lee from Utahns, 44% disapproval.

Let me just break that down for your question.

That's 67% approval from Republicans, 93% disapproval from Democrats.

I wanna give you those numbers just to compare and contrast to Senator Romney, 52% approval and the exact same disapproval.

And his approvals are largely Democrats.

So, talk about that.

Greg Skordas: Well, I think Democrats and independents have reason to like Romney.

He stood up, he stood up to the Trump wave at the time when there were--when the impeachment proceedings were going.

But it hurt him badly with the Republicans.

I mean, there were billboards around the state saying impeach Mitt Romney.

I mean, there were people that were upset at him.

And that's going to cause him problems, like we've been talking about, not only in his own convention in a year, but in a primary, because Republicans are scared of him.

They're a little nervous about him.

But the state as a whole, I mean, he'll do incredibly well if he--like I said, if he's on the ballot in November, because even Democrats and Independents and people who aren't necessarily affiliated with anyone are really saying, boy, he's a champion.

He's one of those people that can bridge the gaps that we have right now.

Let's keep people like Mitt Romney in office.

Lindsay Aerts: But it's interesting, because Romney votes very conservative, right?

So, he's very conservative in his policies, but yet he's painted and perceived to be much more in line with Democrats.

I think Democrats and independents in this state need someone to latch onto.

They don't have very many, where we have so much--so many positions in Utah controlled by Republicans, they don't really have their candidates that they can latch onto, at least in office right now, I should say.

And so, they need someone like Senator Romney to get behind, but in the eyes of Republicans, that paints him more towards the left, when in reality he does vote very conservative.

Jason Perry: Last comment on this issue.

Sam Metz: Jason, I think the single digit difference between Senator Lee and Senator Romney really reflects how the general electorate might be a little bit different than the voters who go to these party conventions.

The Republicans in Orem--and the Democrats in Cedar City, as Greg was saying.

Jason Perry: Okay, I want to get to one final thing on the Supreme Court.

And, Greg, I wanna start with you.

Not just a great lawyer, but you also understand the implications of some of these things.

First, Justice Clarence Thomas under fire a bit.

Wild.

Maybe explain that, just explain what's happening right there, because that's right, because it is getting hotter.

And then we'll get to a pretty big decision that they're going to have to get to, they say tonight, by the night of airing of this show on Friday.

Greg Skordas: So, Clarence Thomas has for decades really been under the radar at the Supreme Court.

He doesn't speak a lot, he doesn't--he--nobody can tell you a great opinion he's written, He's sort of out there.

But since the new Supreme Court is seen as very, very conservative, they're starting to look at him and some others, and they've done some investigation into his financial dealings.

He's dealing with this Texas billionaire, traveling all over in the mega yacht, the private plane, he's taking advantage of these things, and he's like, well, you know, there was no quid pro quo to this.

He's just a friend, and I like being on his yacht every once in a while.

Now we find out more recently that, in fact, he--Clarence Thomas was the--was--had ownership in his mother's home, and that this billionaire bought the home, so Clarence Thomas actually gained financially from that transaction.

That's an absolute reportable issue.

In fact, it's something that shouldn't be done in the first place if you're on the Supreme Court, but you at least have to disclose it and make sure that everything's on the up and up.

It's happened in--I think it was 2014.

Nobody knew about it.

It was completely under the radar.

Now it's suddenly exposed, and Clarence Thomas's response is, "I'll amend my--I'll amend my disclosures."

Okay, you know, eight years later, and other things have come out, and I think he's very much under the microscope right now.

His wife's political dealings, her finances are going to be under the microscope, and Clarence Thomas, you know, he wanted this national attention, he wanted this, you know, this right wing way, but I don't that he expected that he would be so much the focus of some really derisiveness.

Sam Metz: Justice Thomas spoke last year at the Grand America with the Orrin Hatch Foundation, and one of the things he talked about was the potential for political actions, like politicians proposing what he called court packing, to erode trust in the court.

I think it's a really fast news cycle, but the question is how long this story will stick, and if it will erode trust.

I mean, particularly with decisions like the mifepristone decision, which people are anticipating today.

Jason Perry: So, it's gonna have to be the last comment on this, but it's very interesting timing as we're discussing that, at the same time the issue tonight that we'll be getting some sort of comment from the court on is the Food and Drug Administration's authority to regulate this mifepristone, the--this abortion drug.

Greg Skordas: And so, they--we thought the Supreme Court had given us a deadline that they were going to weigh in as to whether they were gonna continue the stay on Wednesday night, and then they said, "Well, we'll let you know by Friday night."

So, we still don't know what's going to happen, but we have some contradictory rulings out there, and the Supreme Court's gotta weigh in.

But the issue is what do we do in the meantime?

Jason Perry: This will be a big story we're watching very closely.

Thank you so much for your commentary, and thank you for watching the "Hinckley Report."

So glad to have you with us.

We'll see you next week.

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