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Rep. Celeste Maloy won her GOP primary by 214 votes. Now Colby Jenkins is requesting a recount.

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Rep. Celeste Maloy won her GOP primary by 214 votes. Now Colby Jenkins is requesting a recount.


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.

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“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.

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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.

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This story is breaking and may be updated.





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Here’s who will lead Utah Valley University as its next president

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Here’s who will lead Utah Valley University as its next president


Jon Anderson will be charged with moving the Orem school forward following the death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on campus last year.

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Incoming UVU President Jon Anderson poses for a photo with his family after an event announcing his selection at Utah Valley University in Orem on Friday, July 17, 2026.



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Beaver County residents set up thousands of sandbags ahead of flashfloods

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Beaver County residents set up thousands of sandbags ahead of flashfloods


BEAVER COUNTY, Utah — A massive community effort is underway as volunteers and Beaver County crews distribute thousands of sandbags to protect homes from the potential path of floodwaters.

After the Cottonwood Fires, residents have been waiting for weeks for relief to come in the form of rain, though officials now warn it may come all at once with an increased risk of flooding and debris flow.

Emergency Service Director Les Whitney believes that the fire has left plenty of debris to bring trouble for residents.

“We got a lot of water. We’re bringing debris with it, so tree branches, tree limbs, logs, lots of different size firewood, and that’s all in the creeks. We’re worried about that plugging up our bridges and stuff, so we have heavy equipment and excavators located in strategic places so that we can keep those bridges open,” said Whitney.

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An estimated 140 homes and condominiums were spared from the flames, but remain in the paths of floodwaters.

Residents can also pick up sandbags at the Beaver County Sheriff’s Office or at the Beaver County Rodeo Fairgrounds.





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Utah man arrested again for allegedly abusing dog twice in three months

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Utah man arrested again for allegedly abusing dog twice in three months


EAGLE MOUNTAIN — An Eagle Mountain man currently on pretrial release in 4th District Court who is accused of abusing his dog has been arrested again for allegedly punching the same animal.

Keith Reaves Davis, 43, was booked into the Utah County Jail on Wednesday for investigation of aggravated cruelty to an animal.

Utah County sheriff’s deputies were called Wednesday afternoon to a grocery store on a report that a man was beating his dog after it had gotten off its leash and was stopped by a bystander, according to a police booking affidavit.

“I reviewed security camera footage from the grocery store, and an individual matching the description of the suspect was seen holding the dog in the air by one paw and repeatedly striking the dog on the right hind leg area. I observed the male strike the dog several times before dropping the dog from approximately 1-2 feet. The strikes appeared to be as hard as the male could hit,” the arresting deputy wrote in the affidavit. “The dog did not cry out or whimper as if the dog was accustomed to the abuse.”

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When questioned, Davis “admitted to striking the dog because it was not behaving,” the affidavit states.

An animal control officer who responded to the scene to take custody of the dog noted it was the same dog he had taken from Davis exactly three months earlier during another animal abuse investigation.

In that case, Davis was charged in 4th District Court with aggravated cruelty to an animal, a class A misdemeanor; and public intoxication, a class C misdemeanor, after deputies received a tip from a neighbor that a dog was being abused at Davis’ home, according to charging documents. When questioned, Davis “acknowledged hitting his dog as punishment,” the charges state.

Deputies also reviewed videos that the neighbor had filmed. The neighbor told investigators “there was blood from the dog on the ground of the garage and (the neighbor) can hear the dog screaming as if it’s being hurt. Deputies got the videos from the (neighbor) and you can hear very loudly the dog screaming and crying with a lot of loud banging noises. In one of the videos, you can hear the dog sounding like it is being choked by a collar and is grasping for air,” a police booking affidavit states.

Davis’ next court hearing in the April case is scheduled for July 28.

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In their latest booking report, sheriff’s deputies note that they “believe further harm will be inflicted on this dog if it is released back to the male a second time,” and have recommended the dog not be returned to Davis.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.



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