Skip to main content

Davis Journal

Auditing our election system is a waste of time and money

Dec 23, 2021 08:38AM ● By Bryan Gray

Distrust breeds distrust, and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson is spot-on when she took a shot last week at a legislative panel spending taxpayer money on a quixotic mission to question Utah’s voting system.

The lawmaker who proposed it, ultra-conservative Mike Schultz, a prominent Trump backer, saw nothing improper about a legislative audit. After all, he said there are Utahns concerned about voter fraud and an audit of our system is just a “routine process.”  One of his buddies, southern Utah’s Phil Lyman, took a similar position saying, “I can’t imagine someone not wanting to understand what is going on with the election system.”

What is going on?  I’ll tell you.  People receive a ballot at their home, and, depending on the election, between 75% and 30% return it expressing their support of a particular candidate or issue. There is no evidence that the vote is fraudulent. In no case anywhere in the country has it been shown that a few mixed-up ballots changed any election, and Utah’s safeguards are touted nationally as a model.

So why should we blow time and money investigating something that there is no evidence of occurring? Simply because someone thinks a giraffe isn’t as tall as they like, should Rep. Schultz audit the Hogle Zoo to ensure giraffes are receiving proper nutrition? Or, as one Utahn wrote to a daily paper, “I have no proof but there may be vampires living in my basement. Will you investigate?”

Our lieutenant governor thinks she understands the motivation of the legislative panel.  

“The endgame here,” she said, “is to fundamentally destroy the voting system…Let’s not deliberately spread lies, falsehoods and misinformation…My question to those elected officials is why are you afraid to let people vote?”

She continued, “I am very concerned about any lawmaker who signs on to these notions where there is no evidence, and with these baseless allegations (the lawmakers) are deliberately undermining the public trust and faith in the foundation of our democratic republic. They are doing it not to solve problems, but to score political points. That’s reprehensible.”

Making it difficult to vote is an assault of our basic foundation where everyone is equal in determining how our government operates and our taxes are spent. As a former Senate Majority leader said, “A whore’s vote is just as good as a debutante’s.”  

More delicately, President Franklin E Roosevelt said, “In the polling booth every American man and woman stands as equals. There are no superiors; there they have no masters save their own minds and conscience.”

The “polling booth” today is the American kitchen or the dinner table where Utahns conveniently fill out their ballots. The mail-in option has increased voting substantially, eliminating the inequities of some poorer inner city locations and limited polling hours forcing people to stand in line for three hours to exercise their constitutional right.

Thank you, Lt. Gov. Henderson for speaking forcefully. Yes, truth matters, even when it’s politically perilous.