Utah
Report: How secure are Utah’s elections?
Estimated read time: 4-5
minutes
OREM — Election integrity has become a hot-button topic nationally since the past presidential election when former President Donald Trump raised false claims about the election being stolen. But where does the Beehive State stand when it comes to election and voting integrity?
To begin answering this question, the Gary R. Herbert Institute for Public Policy at Utah Valley University on Monday held a panel discussion with political and voting experts who presented three reports on Utah’s election integrity.
The reports and the discussion focused on Utah’s election process, voter access and ballot security, 2022 election results in ranked choice voting contests and the issue of inactive ballots.
Could election fraud happen in Utah?
“Voter Access and Ballot Security,” by Kal Munis and Mikelle Dahl, reviewed Utahns’ access to the ballot and the security and counting of their ballots once votes are cast.
“Voting on ballot initiatives, voting for our representatives, really constitutes the only means through which most Americans will ever directly participate into the policymaking process,” Munis said. “It’s no exaggeration to say that preserving the fairness and integrity of the (voting) process is serious and some might even say sacred business.”
According to the report, four pillars contribute to successful elections in Utah: a citizen’s access to the ballot, tabulating equipment, ballot chain of custody and individual voter responsibility.
In Utah, people can register to vote by mail, in-person or by pre-registering automatically at age 18. Dahl said Utah ranks fifth in the United States for voter access and registration with 77.8% of Utah’s voting-age population registered to vote.
An extremely high percentage of Utah voters choose to cast their ballots via mail, the report shows, providing them with easier access to voting and allowing them to complete a ballot at their convenience.
When it comes to casting and counting votes, there are many ways this is done, and methods have had to evolve for the higher volume of ballots cast and the need for faster result tabulation.
Utah uses direct-record electronic and optical scan voting machines — both considered secure voting systems by the United States Election Assistance Commission — and requires each machine and replacement part to be certified by the commission, said the report. Further bolstering security, certified machines are never connected to the internet, making it “impossible” to access them remotely and manipulate election results.
Based upon our review of Utah’s election laws and procedures, the Herbert Institute holds utmost confidence in the security of Utah’s elections.
– “Voter Access and Ballot Security,” by Kal Munis and Mikelle Dahl
Another crucial aspect of a secure election is ballot security and chain of custody — how ballots are handled and transported from polling sites to tabulating locations.
“Without the proper documentation, elections would lose their transparency and trustworthiness to the public because we would not be able to have assurance that the elections were secure,” Dahl said. “Utah requires that election officials document the chain of custody for all voting materials as well as equipment.”
While the aforementioned steps to ensure election integrity mainly fall into the hands of election officials, the voting public also carries responsibility when it comes to elections, mainly in the sense of providing correct information about themselves.
“Some of the responsibilities that voters have (are), they have to contact (an) election office if their ballot doesn’t arrive on time. They have a responsibility to carefully mark, sign and return their ballots on time. They have a responsibility to check their ballot status online or sign up for notifications for when their ballots are mailed, received and tabulated,” Dahl said.
Additionally, it is the responsibility of the voter to seek out reputable and verifiable information on the when, where and how of voting, as well as on candidates and policies.
Dahl and Munis agreed the four pillars are what support Utah’s elections and, given the safeguards in place, election fraud is unlikely in Utah.
“Based upon our review of Utah’s election laws and procedures, the Herbert Institute holds utmost confidence in the security of Utah’s elections,” said the report.
People can read Munis and Dahl’s report, along with others, here.
The summary of UVU professor Alan Parry’s research into ranked choice voting emphasizes that transparent presentation of the results of such elections is key and tallies should be released in a round-by-round breakdown to make it easy for voters to understand.
A joint report by Parry and Rachel Hutchinson, senior policy analyst at FairVote, examines the impact of ballots that become inactive due to the voter’s choice not being selected as the winning candidate.
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A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.
The sheriff’s office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.
The victims had been conducting a tandem jump in which two people are harnessed together, according to a social media post by Aerial Arts Moab, an acrobatics company that described Lewis as “co-owner and best friend.”
Lewis also owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered tandem jumps to inexperienced customers who would be harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute. Promotional videos on the company’s website show pairs of people stepping off the edges of towering cliffs and briefly plummeting before their parachutes open.
In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.
“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”
Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins confirmed the other person who was killed was Danny Joe Kregle, a 68-year-old father and grandfather who was described by a family member as an accomplished businessman.
“Danny had a wonderful sense of humor and was always looking for ways to make people laugh,” relative Sydney Laverty told The Times-Independent. “One of his greatest joys was performing magic tricks alongside his granddaughter.”
Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.
He went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line like it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.
“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night show.
Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the sheriff’s office.
Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in California’s Yosemite National Park.
A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.
Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.
“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.
Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.
“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing: `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”
No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.
Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.
In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) above the Nevada desert.
A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.
The sheriff’s office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.
In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.
“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”
Lewis’ other sport made him an overnight celebrity, thanks to Madonna
Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.
Lewis went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line like it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.
“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night show.
Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the sheriff’s office. Lewis and an unidentified 50-year-old man died at the scene, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
Sheriff’s Lt. Al Cymbaluk confirmed to The Associated Press that it was Lewis the extreme athlete who died. He said he had no further details on the fatal accident.
BASE jumping is far more dangerous than skydiving
Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in California’s Yosemite National Park.
A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.
Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.
“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.
Lewis owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered excursions to inexperienced customers using tandem jumps, in which the customer was harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute.
Sheriff’s spokesperson Cymbaluk said he didn’t know if Lewis and the other man killed were performing a tandem jump.
Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.
“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing: `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”
No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.
Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.
In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet above the Nevada desert.
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