Republican Primary Race Too Close to Call for Largest Utah House District 69 ‘South East Utah’
– By Josh Warburton –
I want to disclose upfront that I’m working with Davina Smith, the Democrat running for Utah House District 69. With that being said, I’m going to do my best to avoid opinion or speculation and instead just report the facts and numbers as they currently stand.
When I went to bed last night, former Grand County Commissioner Lynn Jackson was ahead of Blanding City Mayor Logan Monson by 67 votes. By this morning, the lead had flipped to Monson, who was ahead by 27 votes. As of this writing, just before 1 PM on Wednesday, June 26, Monson had expanded his lead to 96 votes.
So who won? The simple answer is that we just don’t know yet.
When will we know? The most likely answer is by July 9 (my birthday), when the counties are required to submit their canvassed results to the state. But that may not give us the final answer.
State Code Section 20A-4-401 Subsection 3 states: “Except as provided in Subsection (2) or (3)(b), for a race between candidates, if the difference between the number of votes cast for a winning candidate in the race and a losing candidate in the race is equal to or less than .25% of the total number of votes cast for all candidates in the race, the losing candidate may file a request for a recount in accordance with Subsection (4).”
So what does that mean? Basically, if the race is closer than .25% of the total votes cast, the losing candidate can ask for a recount. With 7,218 votes cast currently, 1% would be 72 votes, so .25% would be about 18 votes.
How many more votes are left to be counted? I called the County Clerk’s offices in the six counties that HD 69 includes—Kane, Garfield, Wayne, San Juan, Grand, and parts of Emery—to see what they could tell me about how many more ballots are left to be counted, and here’s what they told me:
Kane County had 228 ballots still to be counted as of last night, but those have now been counted this morning and are reflected in the totals on the state’s website. Heather there reported that there were just 7 more provisional ballots—those are ballots where the person registered and voted the same day, and they need to be checked for residency, signatures, etc. Additionally, they had approximately 25 more ballots needing to be “cured,” which involves reaching out to the voter to verify that the ballot was indeed theirs, often due to a signature mismatch or other discrepancies.
Garfield County reported that the only ballots they had to count as of last night were about 8 that needed to be cured. No provisional ballots. They also received a few ballots today that were postmarked by last Monday and will likely receive a few more in the next few days. Those will be counted in a single batch and added to the final total during their canvassing, planned for July 8.
San Juan County had about 40 provisional ballots and 40 to 45 ballots that need to be cured as of today, and another 160 ballots arrived in the mail today. Those 160 should be counted today and uploaded to the state’s website late this afternoon. Lyman Duncan at their office told me that with just two people in their office, the provisional and cured ballots will be looked at tomorrow. Curing and checking provisional ballots can be time-consuming, and curing generally requires reaching the voter, which takes a fair amount of time. Because of the size of San Juan County and the relatively large number of ballots received today, Lyman guessed that they might see a fair number of legal ballots arrive in the next couple of days.
Wayne County’s deputy clerk Tawni said they had no regular uncounted ballots as of last night, just about 5 that needed to be cured and a single provisional ballot. They also received one more ballot in the mail today. Her best guess is that they might receive fewer than 10 more ballots to count by mail in the next few days.
Emery County is split in regards to HD 69, with just four precincts in HD 69 and eight that are not. As of last night, they just had a single ballot left to be counted, a provisional one. Today, they received another 53 ballots, but only 30 of those are in HD 69, according to Brenda Tuttle, Emery’s County Clerk.
So again, who won, or who is going to win the GOP nomination? I said upfront I would try not to speculate too much. San Juan County alone has over twice as many ballots left to count as the current vote differential, with more to come. All the other counties also have votes still to arrive, but that will likely be fewer each day moving forward since they needed to be postmarked by Monday. If I were to speculate, I’d guess that Monson will get the majority of the remaining votes in San Juan County, where he is currently winning with about 65% of the counted vote. It’s the largest county of the six counties in the district, both in size and population. If that ends up being the case, and with Monson’s current lead, he may expand beyond the 96-vote differential and get the nod. However, if the remaining ballots break for Jackson, he may overcome that differential and eke out a win. Based on what I was told by all the clerks, we won’t know until the canvasses are all complete, on or about July 9. And again, if at that time the vote differential is less than .25% of all votes cast, the losing candidate can ask for a recount. With what’s expected to still be counted, .25% would be something like 20 votes or less. Very possible.
In summary, there are still enough ballots to count, and that are expected to arrive, that we do not have a clear winner in this contest. Neither Monson or Jackson had posted on their Facebook pages today as of this writing and I did not reach out to either of them for comment.
