Jason Perry: On this episode of "The Hinckley Report," as Utahns begin to cast their ballots, conversations on election security heighten, the number of unaffiliated voters surges as candidates and parties try to win over new supporters, and polling reveals where Utahns stand ahead of a historic midterm election.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund and by donations to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Hello, and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

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

Covering the week, we have Sean Higgins, politics reporter with KUER and co-host of the "State Street Podcast;" Holly Richardson, host of "Inside Sources;" and Daniel Woodruff, reporter with KSL.

So glad to have you with us.

We have a lot to talk about on election security.

So many things happening in the country and in the state of Utah, and I want to jump right in with you, Sean.

The Department of Justice announced this week we have poll watchers coming to the state of Utah, and other places as well.

Talk about that.

Sean Higgins: Absolutely, so we heard yesterday from Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson that she was notified on Wednesday evening that the Department of Justice was going to be sending election monitors to the state of Utah.

That raised a lot of alarm bells for some people with all the rhetoric around election security, certainly all the noise being made by the Trump administration on election security, but we got some more details on that yesterday from Lieutenant Governor Henderson, where it was really clarifying what they can and can't do.

It sounds like most people won't even realize these poll watchers will be there.

They won't be wearing any identifying material.

They can't be armed.

They can't interact with the voters in any way.

The only people who are really going to know they're there are the poll watchers, or excuse me, the poll workers themselves.

So, I think when it comes to the nuts and bolts of how this is going to go, we heard the Lieutenant Governor yesterday say that almost everyone won't even realize anything is different.

So, whether that will be true in practice, I think we'll learn on election day, but that is what we heard yesterday.

Jason Perry: So, what does that mean then, Holly?

I know you've been following this so closely, and you're connected to elections overall.

What does it mean that they're there?

Holly Richardson: I think it just--I think it just means that the Trump administration wants to say, hey, we want to make sure that these elections are conducted fairly.

It's not the first time it's happened in Utah, but it is a little bit different, I think this time, because it's so broad, right?

There was a Reuters article I read this week that said the DOJ is sending 1,000 election monitors to all 50 states, so not 1,000 each, right, but overall, and I think Utah probably won't get very many.

We don't know the numbers at this point, but it's--it just feels a little bit like, "We're there to make sure you do a good job," and that's fine, because Utah does do a good job.

The part that's concerning is you have Todd Blanche, who just said this week that they don't have any intention to try and stop election counting, but they would if they needed to, if they felt like it wasn't going well.

Jason Perry: Daniel, we've heard and Holly just said maybe a thousand poll watchers across the country, and, you know, some are talking about whether or not they're being sent to particular places where there are concerns, but the timing is interesting considering the lawsuit that's happening with the state of Utah and our own Lieutenant Governor.

Daniel Woodruff: Yeah, Lieutenant Governor Henderson has been told she's under investigation for failing to provide certain voter information to the federal government, which she has declined to do, saying that it's not appropriate to do so.

But Lieutenant Governor, I think, has been very clear over the years about her position on election security and how elections are carried out.

And in fact, yesterday, and Sean was at her media briefing where she said she welcomes the oversight as far as it's done, you know, appropriately.

But yeah, this comes at an interesting time, because election security has been an issue brought up repeatedly by the Trump administration for years, and now this is a very consequential midterm election where the balance of Congress is--the control of Congress is in the balance, and certainly a lot of eyes on this, and the rhetoric around election security has really only heated up.

Jason Perry: When we talk about this administration, I want to read a quote from the Lieutenant Governor.

She was just on "60 Minutes" this week, talking about election security, and Holly, I want to read a statement from the Lieutenant Governor.

Because she started talking about where the problems are from without or within.

I want to read this really quickly.

This is from Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson.

She said on "60 Minutes," "In the past two elections that I oversaw as lieutenant governor, the threats were all external.

Non-state actors, cyber security threats, and other things.

But now we also have threats coming from within our own government."

Talk about that for a moment, what that means.

Holly Richardson: Yeah, I mean, I think she was pretty clear, and she has been for a long time that the federal government, the DOJ, is asking for things, as Daniel said, that are not only are they're not appropriate, but they're not legal, right?

She's prohibited by law from sharing some of the information that the federal government is asking for, so she has already said and has been willing to share all publicly available information for Utah voters.

What she's not willing to send are our Social Security numbers, our full address, our full emails, right?

All of those things, our voting history even, and she's like, there's not any legal precedent that would allow me to do this, and so I am just following the law.

Sean Higgins: I spoke with Lieutenant Governor Henderson last month about this very issue, and one thing she really voiced her frustration on is, Utah is showing its work.

We've had audits over the last few years that have shown areas of improvement, and by and large, the vast majority of what happens here in Utah is above board, is doing well, and the frustration that she voiced to me was that "The federal government wants us to show our work, I show our work, and it's not what they want to see."

They're almost looking for a problem, where in Utah, there really isn't one.

Daniel Woodruff: And obviously, Jason, too, if I can jump in, it's noteworthy to have a Republican say these things because most Republicans in state office like what she holds are not saying what she's saying, and certainly she's attracted the ire of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party here in Utah.

She's got a lot of detractors on social media that will just blast her anytime she says anything at all, especially about election security.

So, the fact that she goes on "60 Minutes" and says these things really does set her apart from a lot of other state office holders throughout the United States in the Republican Party.

Jason Perry: Sean, how is that being received with Utahns that you're interviewing and talking to, because she's talking about the current administration, a party that she's a member of.

Sean Higgins: I think, by and large, this is something where you have a little bit of a case of strange bedfellows, where you have people who are very liberal, very progressive, be like, "Hey, I love what you're doing right now, standing up for the state of Utah," but you also see people who are in the know of how elections actually work.

I spoke with Davis County clerk Brian McKenzie, who was really almost saying the same things as Lieutenant Governor Henderson was, maybe not as forcefully and not as colorful language as she sometimes uses.

But the people who know on how elections actually function are really supportive of her, and that crosses party lines.

Jason Perry: I want to get to one more quote, the response from the Democratic Party in Utah.

This is from Brian King.

And Daniel, I wanna read this, and give us some thoughts about this, because he's trying to get to what might happen as we're watching elections and what these poll watchers might be doing or what the impact might be.

This is from Brian King, who is the Democratic Party chair.

He said, "Donald Trump does not get to spend years attacking our elections and then use the power of the federal government to intimidate the people who participate in them.

Utahns are not criminals, our elections are not Trump's to control, and our polling places are not his to weaponize.

Every eligible voter has the right to cast a ballot without fear or retaliation or intimidation."

He's getting to what might happen from his perspective with these poll watchers.

Daniel Woodruff: I think it definitely goes to concerns he's expressed over the years, but that others have about this announcement that poll watchers will be there.

And I think some may imagine those that you can clearly identify wearing guns on their holsters, you know, and things like that, and we've been told that's not going to happen.

So again, I think Sean made a good point.

We'll see how it works on election day.

That hasn't happened yet.

But it goes to the concerns that certainly I'm not surprised Brian King and other Democrats have that they've expressed that over the years, and that is that they feel that the Trump administration is trying to put its thumb on the scale of how elections are run and ultimately what the results would end up being.

Jason Perry: Go ahead, Holly.

Holly Richardson: I think too that people need to know they can cast their ballot a variety of ways, so they can stick it in the mail, they can vote early in person, they can vote in person on election day, but they can also use ballot dropboxes, right?

And one of the things that I've seen already in the lead up to the election is people are using more drop boxes than they have in the past, and I think maybe some concerns about the US Postal Service, right, that maybe if there's any kind of concern there that they're using these dropboxes.

But also, if you're worried about having poll watchers at the polls, well, don't go to the polls on election day, because you have other ways that you can vote before you get to that point.

Sean Higgins: And I think one thing that Brian King is really--a feeling that Brian King is really trying to tap into here is there is some concern that all of these efforts and all this rhetoric around election security isn't about election security at all, it's about sowing doubt in the system and a feeling on some political stripes that this is just about discouraging people from voting at all.

And I think when the news that there are election monitors here, whether or not we're gonna be able to tell they're there or not, just people knowing that they are there might turn some people off.

I don't know if that's gonna be the case on election day.

We'll see the day after, but I think that is a real concern and it's something that Brian King is speaking to directly there.

Jason Perry: Not to put too fine a point on it, but to this election security, our legislature has been looking at this.

It's a conversation that's been happening here locally as well, and this last legislative session, our lawmakers did pass legislation to do a study.

Utah Valley University did a study to determine election security, and Holly, the results came back, the report was just given of this, and the study found that the system works in--works the way it should either in person or mail-in voting.

Either way, it's inherently more secure.

There's no way either way, it's more secure.

Holly Richardson: And one of the things I also saw from this study is that it really increased voter participation, being able to vote by mail.

So, once that became basically universally available in Utah, we saw a big upswing in voter participation, especially in rural areas.

So, there's good news there, I think.

Jason Perry: Yeah, there was a couple of things as part of that news you were talking about, Holly.

This study looked at three ways to look at what we could do to make them more secure if they're not secure, and there were three possibilities.

And Daniel, a couple of them were very interesting because they come with trade-offs, mostly money, is what they do.

The first one is requiring counties to hire staff to check and verify IDs at ballot boxes, making sure the IDs match the person that's coming in.

That's the first one they recommended they could do.

It has an expense to it, about $1 million upfront and about $8.1 million in labor per year.

So, that's the first one.

Daniel Woodruff: And that's, do they want to fund it, right?

This all comes down to, does a county want to pay for that?

And you know, the talk about election security has a number of facets to it, right?

And a lot of the audits that we've seen over the last couple of years that Sean alluded to have talked about ways to improve, and the state has taken some of those steps to do that, but the ones that were brought up, like you mentioned in the study, yeah, they're there.

Is the will to fund it there?

That's important.

Sean Higgins: And I think that that funding piece is important as well, because correct me if I'm wrong, the original voter ID bill had that provision in there or something similar where a poll watcher would be physically checking people's IDs, and that was one thing.

They looked at the price tag and they went, oh, maybe we'll take that one out.

But I do think when we--it feels like Groundhog Day a little bit every time we get one of these new polls, elections are secure, elections are secure, elections are secure.

Are we getting to the end of that road?

I don't know.

Like, will this fever break about people thinking that we need to have even more secure elections?

We'll see.

Jason Perry: What do you think, Holly?

You're talking to everyone.

Holly Richardson: I think that there are a couple of trade-offs, not just financial, but one of them that was brought up in the report is wait times.

So, you're talking about it, especially if you say you can only vote on election day, you're talking about wait times that can run into the hours.

And people aren't going to go vote if they're going to have to wait in line for a long, long time.

The other thing that the report did is they had a pretty compelling graphic about the two times that Utah verifies identification, citizen identification.

So, the first is when you register to vote.

The second is when you actually do vote.

So, your signatures have to match, you have to have the last 4 of your Social Security or your driver's license number, and you have to have the opportunity, right, to show you've already proven you're a citizen, then you're proving this is who you are.

And if there's any question about, hey, these signatures maybe don't really match, you have to have the opportunity to cure the ballot or correct the ballot, right, to make sure, or to say, well, you know, that really wasn't me.

I don't know what happened, something like that.

Jason Perry: Before we leave this, sort of just two more parts of this report, the two other options they explored, Sean.

One was purchasing smart dropboxes.

They capture photos of voters, and that don't require in-person staff, so you put your ballot in or something, they get a picture, and then the state-endorsed digital identity program.

Both of them come with certain amounts of cost, to Daniel's point also, it's just a trade-off there if you want to pay for these measures.

Sean Higgins: I think the digital ID program is interesting.

I've not really heard much about that.

But as far as a smart dropbox, I believe all of our dropboxes are monitored by cameras anyway, so I'm not sure how much you--they want the selfie instead of the bird's eye view, I guess.

So, I think, again, this is gonna come down to funding and really practicality of--because it's great to say we're going to check everyone's ID physically as they drop off their ballot, but that creates a logistical headache as well for counties who are having to find people who want to do this.

So, in theory, sure.

In practice, maybe not so much.

Jason Perry: I want to talk about the implications for Utahns and how they really are reacting to this, Holly, because we have all these measures that could be put in place, but where are Utahns actually on voter security and whether or not their votes can--are being counted the way they intended?

And so, we've done some polling, the Deseret News and the Hinckley Institute of Politics, and so we asked a couple of questions.

I just want to break these down because they're very interesting.

The question was, how confident are you, if at all, that your state or local government will conduct a fair and accurate election in 2026?

This is a brand new poll, people have not heard this yet.

76% of Utahns confident, 19% not confidence, only 6% don't know.

Talk about that, that's pretty high.

Holly Richardson: Yeah, it's pretty high, and but that's to the point that we've been discussing already.

So, we keep looking at, are elections secure?

Yes, they are.

Are voters confident?

Yes, they are.

Do we vote by mail?

Yes, we do, more than 90% of us, right?

And even recent elections in the primary this year, more than 90% were either using the mailbox or the ballot dropbox, right?

Because we are confident, we do know it works.

And I think it's a little bit frustrating from my perspective, and I'm not in an elected office, but I think it's frustrating to continue to have the same types of conversation because some people keep stirring the water.

Jason Perry: You talked about the mail-in ballots, and Daniel, this is another question we asked about the confidence in that, and the question was, how confident are you, if at all, that votes cast by mail in Utah are counted as voters intended?

It went up just a little bit here.

77% confident, 17% not, only 6% don't know on that one.

Daniel Woodruff: There's so little in America that we can get that much agreement on.

Is that not true?

Most polls come back and they're much more split down the middle, or you see a lot more I don't knows.

The number of I don't knows is incredibly small in those results, and I think generally it speaks to what I've observed as a political reporter over the years, and that is that voting by mail in Utah is very popular, and voting by mail is popular not only among those who vote, but also among a majority of our elected officials, and efforts to dismantle it have run up against brick walls with pretty resounding defeats.

And so the poll, again, wow, you don't see many polls that have that much support for almost any issue, including is the sky blue.

Jason Perry: Sean, so what's at the heart of this?

Is there a disconnect there between confidence, at least in the minds of Utahns and policymakers, or is this part of an overall sort of feeling towards the process itself and the parties?

Sean Higgins: I mean, I think this is another Groundhog Day moment where we look at these numbers, and clearly the confidence is there from voters, and I think like Holly said, there's a very, very vocal minority of people in Utah that just see these numbers and they're unacceptable.

And I've heard election officials, whether it's Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson or Attorney General Derek Brown said there's a real feeling of a heads I win, tails you lose mentality for some people, that in order for the people who I don't like to win, there has to be cheating, there has to be something nefarious going on.

And I think that narrative is very headline grabby and very attention grabbing, but when you look at these numbers, you cannot argue with the numbers and the confidence that people actually have in our election system.

Jason Perry: So, is there confidence in the reality a little too, Holly, because you have some of our elected officials like Senator Mike Lee that would say even one ballot that is not authorized or legal is too many.

Holly Richardson: Well, I would just say the way statistics works is you can't get to absolute zero, right?

You just can't do it.

And if we were to go, for example, back to paper ballots and hand counting, our error rate jumps considerably, right?

So, I think it's you always want to work towards 100% compliance and 100%, but the reality is you're never really going to get there, and to have two people cast a ballot that probably shouldn't have, well, you know, it didn't change the outcome of any election.

And also that's pretty darn good.

Jason Perry: Let's talk about what it's doing for the parties, for themselves, and how these candidates are doing.

But Daniel, I want to talk about how it's sort of translating into affiliation in Utah.

You know, whether or not people are okay with what's happening or not okay, however it is, I want to talk about what's happening with the unaffiliated voters in Utah.

And we have our primary parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.

I want to talk about that, but what's interesting is going into this election, we've had an increase of 29,000 people in Utah that are now unaffiliated.

That's the largest we have seen for quite some time of now newly minted unaffiliated voters.

Daniel Woodruff: Yeah, and a portion of that was due to, I believe, the No Labels Party dissolving earlier this year.

Jason Perry: About 10,000.

Daniel Woodruff: Still a big increase, and you know, you have to remember in Utah Republicans have closed primaries, Democrats have open primaries, so you have to affiliate with Republicans in order to do that.

And I wonder how much of that is people who had affiliated to vote in the Republican primary then getting out and re-unaffiliating.

But depending on which expert you talk to, there's a sense that this is a reaction to President Trump, that people want to feel some sort of control.

But I would add also with the Democrats, you see this rapid swing back and forth of we don't like the Republicans, so we'll vote for Democrats.

Now we don't like them, so we'll vote for Republicans back and forth, and unaffiliated can give people, according to some experts that I've read about talking about this, saying that this gives them a sense of control and a feeling that, you know, I'm not happy with either, and so I'm going to voice that by unaffiliating and voting for the candidate that I deem best.

Jason Perry: Go ahead, Holly.

Holly Richardson: Well, they can do that anyway in a general, right, so as you mentioned, the primaries are closed, but the general election, you don't have to be affiliated either way.

But one of the things that's interesting too about those numbers is 7,000 Republicans have left.

Like, we've lost, Republicans have lost a net 7,000 voters in the state of Utah, and I think that speaks, and I hear it on my show all the time from our texters, our listeners, that people are not happy with the direction of the national Republican Party.

They don't feel like it represents them.

There, of course, there are people who still do, but there are people who are really, really unhappy, and they feel like, to your point, that the only thing they really can do to voice their displeasure is to say I'm no longer a part of that party.

Sean Higgins: And I do think it's worth mentioning that Utah has always had a history of a large amount of people who don't affiliate with a certain party.

I believe even before this, this number, unaffiliated, was the second biggest voting group in the state, higher than even Democrats.

And talking to experts that I've talked to in the political science field, being unaffiliated does not mean you're an independent.

You are still a partisan actor, and you probably still have a preference that you will always vote.

So, whether these people are just a way for them to voice their disaffection with either political party, probably more Republicans based on the data we have now.

Are they probably still gonna vote Republican?

I would say probably yes, instead of voting for Democrat.

We've talked to voters throughout the state that they say they voted for Trump three times, are really upset with him, but they'd be 6 feet in the ground before they vote for a Democrat, so who knows?

Daniel Woodruff: I saw a chart too, Jason, where you've got Republican affiliations in Utah up here, and it remains that way.

It's a strong Republican state.

Democrats are down here, and unaffiliateds are down here.

I think the interesting thing for me to watch is over the next couple years, does that trend of unaffiliating continue in any meaningful way, or is this a blip on the screen due to severe voter disaffection with the current political system?

Jason Perry: Holly, the last word on this one on affiliations, because you mentioned Republicans decreased by 7,000 to this point.

We still have some time.

Democrats increased by 13,000.

Of course, we just talked about the unaffiliated increasing.

Talk about that a little bit, because the Democrats did increase.

Holly Richardson: Well, I think if you look at the numbers, I suspect you're going to find them in CD1.

So again, I don't--you don't have to be affiliated to vote in the general election, but because we have a congressional district that's in play, it's really the heart of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, and it is favored to go to the Democrats.

And so I don't know if people are saying, well, this is my way to say, hey, I'm proud to be a Democrat and I can openly support my guy.

Jason Perry: Okay, I want to take just a minute on some pieces of mail that are coming to people this week on Amendment B. Amendment B is very interesting in Utah.

I want to talk about that for just a moment because sometimes you see issues that are these constitutional amendments that end up being something that drives people to the polls, maybe helps people to affiliate at the polls, and maybe even helps propel some people to their positions to winning.

Talk about that for just a minute, Sean, what this amendment is and why there's so much interest in this.

Sean Higgins: Right, so Amendment B, this was a piece of legislation that was passed earlier this year that would pretty simply raise the threshold for a citizen initiative that raised taxes from passing the threshold would be--is now 50%.

If Amendment B passes, that would be moved up to 60%.

And the argument that legislative Republicans really made on this is that we want people to have--we want there to be more, essentially, oversight over tax increases in the state of Utah.

So, you wanna have more, I guess, vetting, needs to be an extra good policy to get 60% of the vote instead of just 50 plus 1.

And the real debate here that I've seen is some people see this as almost like a Trojan horse, in effect, where this could undercut the entire initiative process, where the legislature could make the case that every single citizen initiative has something to do with taxes or something to do with finances, so it does fall under this 60% threshold.

And I think whether this does pass or not really could be a litmus test or a canary in the coal mine of sorts for policies that the Republican supermajority has really pushed for the last year, especially with the hubbub around redistricting and all these initiatives over the last few years.

Holly Richardson: And that's what I'm seeing from the arguments, especially opposed to Amendment B, is that it is kind of an end run as a way to get rid of citizens initiatives.

Sounds decent on the surface, we're going to make sure that, you know, people really, really want to increase their own taxes, but I think in some ways there are a lot of people who are saying, look, we don't trust the legislature.

We know that we've passed citizens initiatives and they've changed them once they've gotten back to Capitol Hill or they've tried and there's ongoing lawsuits about how much the legislature can change after a citizens initiative is passed, so that one, I think, has the most attention on the ballot right now.

And I don't know how it's gonna go, but there are a lot of people who are concerned and weighing in.

Daniel Woodruff: We're getting mailers on this, and just really quickly, I've gotten a lot of mailers.

The pro side for the amendment is saying don't let outside groups come in and raise your taxes.

The anti-side of the amendment is saying do not take power away from the people.

This is a big fight.

The issue is not going anywhere.

Jason Perry: Yeah, we've got about ten seconds.

Interesting, the money pouring into this has the potential to be more expensive than any of our congressional races in this cycle.

Daniel Woodruff: Especially on the opposition side.

Jason Perry: Yeah, so interesting.

Thank you for your insights.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund and by donations to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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