After coming up 214 votes short, Republican candidate Colby Jenkins has asked for a recount in his race against incumbent U.S. Rep. Celeste Maloy in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District.
Jenkins’ campaign sent the letter Monday afternoon to Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson — whose office administers state elections — formally requesting the results be re-tabulated and that Jenkins’ observers be allowed to be within six feet of the ballot counters so they can observe the process.
Under Utah law, a candidate is entitled to request a recount if they finish within 0.25 percentage points in the race. The law requires county clerks to rerun the ballots through the vote counters and also to reexamine all ballots that were disqualified to verify the decision to disqualify the ballot was correct.
After Maloy led by about 3,000 votes on election night, Jenkins steadily whittled away at the margin as more ballots were counted. When results were certified last week, Jenkins received 53,534 votes to 53,748 for Maloy — a margin of just under 0.2 percentage points.
“With the kind of margins we have I anticipated a recount. My team is prepared for this,” Maloy said in a recorded video statement. “I want to make sure that every Utah voter has a high level of confidence in our election system, the integrity of our elections and their votes will be counted. … We’ll watch this recount play out, but I’m confident the final result will be the same.”
Earlier this month, a federal judge rejected a lawsuit filed by Jenkins’ campaign trying to compel the clerks in five counties to tally nearly 1,200 ballots that were postmarked after the state’s deadline. Jenkins’ attorney argued that the late timestamp was due to delays in shipping mail in southern Utah to Las Vegas to be postmarked.
The campaign also sued unsuccessfully in state court to require the Washington County clerk to provide the Jenkins campaign with a list of ballots that had been rejected because signatures did not match what the county had on file. Getting the list would enable the campaign to contact voters and encourage them to “cure” the errors or verify that the vote should have been counted.
The judge said that the law gives the county clerks discretion as to whether they will turn over the “cure lists” to campaigns.
Jenkins still has the option of filing a lawsuit contesting the election results, as well.
Last week, Phil Lyman, who challenged Gov. Spencer Cox in the Republican primary, sent a letter to the Utah Supreme Court — on his official legislative letterhead — contesting the results.
Lyman lost the election by 37,525 votes — or 54.40% to 45.60%.
The court, however, rejected Lyman’s letter, saying the court’s rules of procedure require it to be filed as a formal lawsuit. Lyman said Monday that his team was working on that challenge.
This story is breaking and may be updated.
