Editors Note: This article was originally published in the Aug. 30, 2023 issue of the Chronicle Progress. Some information may be outdated.
About 550 ballots have already been cast ahead of closely watched Sept. 5 GOP contest
A normally sleepy municipal primary election will instead be a countywide vote this year as the Republican race to replace Rep. Chris Stewart is set to draw more voters to the ballot box.
Millard County election supervisors mailed out about 5,300 ballots starting in the middle of August—testament to the grip the Republican party has on the area.
Only Hinckley and Kanosh town board elections will feature primary contests this year. The vast majority of ballots went out to registered Republicans across the county, eligible to vote in the Sept. 5 closed primary contest pitting Celeste Maloy, Becky Edwards and Bruce Hough against one another for Stewart’s vacated seat.
Whoever wins the CD2 Republican primary, generally speaking, wins the race, regardless of Democratic challengers or third-party competitors. The general election is mere formality.
By Monday afternoon, County Clerk Marki Rowley’s office had received about 550 countable ballots back. Another 31 were challenged and awaited curing. One voter curiously submitted a ballot from the 2022 general election, deemed incurable, but still counted in numbers tracked by the clerk’s office.
“We count it in our numbers, because we received it obviously, but we can’t count (the vote) because it’s not this election. You know what, people do it every election. It’s frustrating. That’s why we account for it in our counts…then we explain why we’re off,” the county clerk explained.
In-person early voting ends on Friday, Sept. 1. Polls will be open in both Delta and Fillmore. In Delta, voters can cast ballots in person between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the county’s satellite office. Voters can cast ballots in person in Fillmore up to 5 p.m. Friday.
County clerks were given the choice of continuing early in-person voting even on Labor Day. Rowley said she decided her office would simply resume in-person voting on election day, Tuesday, Sept. 5, when voters can cast ballots between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. both in Fillmore and Delta.
Voters can still drop off their ballots in one of the county’s drop boxes anytime before Tuesday at 8 p.m.
For those who switch party affiliations in order to vote in the GOP primary, that deadline was in June, Rowley said. It was changed after the election deadlines were changed this year by decree of the governor in order to quickly replace Stewart.
The last day to register to vote and receive a by-mail ballot for the primary election was Aug. 25. However, voters can still register on election day and cast a ballot as long as they have a valid ID and proof of residency.
The general election takes place on Nov. 21.
Interested voters can monitor the balloting progress by going to the county’s election webpage, navigating to “election results” and clicking the link under the heading “2023 Municipal Election – Ballot Progress.”
Rowley said her office is trying out a new accounting scheme that reconciles ballots at the end of each business day. Visitors can see how many ballots were returned, how many were challenged, how many cured, and more.
Rowley said she got the new format after seeing Tooele County’s clerk show it off at a conference.
“I’ve had to tweak it a few times to make it work for our (office). I can’t promise something won’t be changed tomorrow,” she said. “We’re learning as we go.”
Beyond greater transparency, Rowley said her office was also contending with new rules set forth in multiple pieces of legislation passed last year. The biggest changes were spurred by HB448. That bill changed some of Utah’s election processes in a bid to increase security and create a more uniform system throughout the state, among other things.
“We’re trying to comply as best we can with all the new legislation that was tacked onto us from last year’s legislation…we’re kind of learning how to implement all of that,” Rowley said.
Rowley said there was a possibility the state will have election auditors monitoring the local election. Sites around the state are selected at random for such audits now, the county clerk said.
“I think they’re doing several counties each time, so we very well could be included in that. But we won’t know until they’ve done their random selection,” she said.
