Utah
Southern Utah county clerks test out systems to prepare for election day
ST. GEORGE, Utah — With the election now less than three weeks away, clerks in Washington County did a test run Wednesday to make sure everything is ready to count the votes.
Officials used the test to try to reassure the public that their vote will count on election day as long as their votes are in on time.
Among the largest machines on display was one that didn’t count ballots or find out who people voted for, it just organized the unopened envelopes by precinct and made sure they have the signatures of voters. It’s just the first step in the process that ultimately will result in another machine scanning the ovals and counting the votes.
Ryan Sullivan, Washington County’s main election clerk, showed the public and media members that entire process.
“From audits, all these thousands of ballots have personally been encountered with other teams. I’m super confident these machines are reading the ballots correctly,” he said.
But one of the admittedly few members of the public to take in the test run, David Johnson of Washington City, said even after seeing everything in action, he still doesn’t trust the machines.
“Part of my working career was working with machines and electronics and things,” said Johnson, a local and state Republican delegate. “I know that machines make mistakes, just like humans make mistakes. And I also know that any machine can be manipulated.”
Sullivan said while nothing is 100 percent, there isn’t a way for someone from a computer to hack into the machines in Washington County and other election tabulation centers around the state. He said all of the information from the individual ballots, including voters’ names and who they voted for, remains on site in an internal server in each county and is not on the internet. The only thing sent out are the raw numbers each candidate or measure receives.
Ultimately, Sullivan had three pieces of advice for voters to ensure their vote counts. The one on top of the list: Use the drop boxes, rather than the mailbox.
“If there’s one thing I can guarantee 100 percent is that if you are going to put anything into a drop box, it will get here,” Sullivan said. “My staff is the one that picks them up. They will make its way back here 100% of the time.”
The other guarantee?
“I would just highly recommend that people vote in person,” Sullivan said. “If you don’t vote in person, my personal preference is I use a drop box.”
Sullivan acknowledges some people will have no choice but to use the mailbox.
That caused an issue during this year’s Congressional primary with Washington and Iron County mail being processed two hours across the border in Las Vegas since the 2010s.
“Ballots weren’t stamped in time because the mail was sent to Nevada and then came back, so 1,100 voters that thought they were doing it right because they mailed it before such-and-such-a-date, their votes did not get counted, and that’s just not the way our country is supposed to do it,” Johnson said.
That’s still going to be the process in November. While Sullivan said he can’t control the Postal Service, he has met with postmasters to assure the ballots are safe. Still, he said people sending their ballots in the mail can’t wait until the last minute.
“If you’re going to vote by mail, do it early,” Sullivan said. “And if it’s close to election day, I would take the ballot into the post office and have it hand stamped so that you can make sure that it has a clear postmark date on it. And that has to be at least the day before election.”
He added that just putting a ballot into the outgoing mail on Election Day doesn’t mean it will get an Election Day postmark.
“Whatever you do, do not mail your ballot on election day because it will be late,” Sullivan said. “If you find yourself on Election Day and you’ve got your ballot, you need to take it to a drop box or head down to one of our in-person vote centers.
Sullivan said there are other safeguards in place to ensure a vote is counted, and it’s counted just once.
- A person who had already voted by a mail-in ballot that goes to a polling place will be flagged if they vote again. In addition, the machines at the in-person voting sites will read one mailed in as invalid no matter how it is filled out.
- A person who has not voted in two years will no longer be mailed a ballot. If they vote in person, their ballot will be considered provisional until it is double-checked.
- At least in Washington County, all of the drop boxes are under 24-hour surveillance. And there are certain seals that assure they can only be opened by an election official.
Utah
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(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Delta airplane travels down the runway at Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City last March. Passengers on a Delta flight last July are suing the airline over injuries suffered because of violent turbulence.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Environmental Protection Agency awarded Utah and Salt Lake County a total of $3.5 million in grants to assess potentially polluted properties for eventual cleanup and redevelopment.
The agency announced a $2 million grant to Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality and $1.5 million to Salt Lake County to conduct environmental assessments and inventory brownfield sites for cleanup. Brownfields are sites that may be difficult to redevelop or expand because of “the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant,” according to the agency.
“These brownfields grants will help Utah communities clean up contaminated sites and unlock opportunities for redevelopment and investment,” EPA Regional Administrator Cyrus Western said in a news release announcing the grants earlier this week. “By transforming underused properties into community assets, EPA is helping create healthier neighborhoods and stronger local economies.”
The two grants awarded to Utah and Salt Lake County are among more than $248 million awarded to nearly 200 communities nationwide for brownfield assessment and cleanup. Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality plans to focus the resources on several areas in Ogden, Heber City and Fillmore, among others, according to Bill Rees, who leads Utah’s brownfield cleanup program.
“What we do is work to secure the funding and then begin to reach out to our communities across the state, say, ‘Listen, there’s opportunity to do some assessment work in your community if you’re interested,’ and then work with our rural partners, work with our urban partners to see if there are sites that will fit that bill,” he told KSL.
The state has received similar grants in the past, and Rees said the money can help local governments determine what to do with ailing properties such as old schools, hospitals or private property that have gone to waste.
“Is there asbestos in it, or is there hazardous material in it? Or could there be something that’s impacting the soil or the groundwater, and a policymaker needs to make a decision?” asked Rees. “Knowledge allows you to make good decisions.”
The $1.5 million awarded to Salt Lake County is the largest brownfields assessment grant the county has ever received, according to a county press release.
“This grant is a real win for our communities,” said Mayor Jenny Wilson. “This funding will let us do vital environmental work on a larger scale and in more neighborhoods. It reflects exactly the kind of partnership between local and federal government that gets results for residents.”
The county grant funds will be used to help create cleanup plans in three areas, including a vehicle storage yard in Salt Lake City’s Ballpark Neighborhood, a 4.26-acre vacant lot in Millcreek and a small commercial building in Magna that was damaged during an earthquake in March 2020, according to the EPA.
Contributing: Don Brinkherhoff
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.
The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City issued red flag warning Friday morning as emergency workers continued to battle one of the state’s largest wildfires in its history.
The red flag warning, issued when critical fire warnings are occurring or imminent, was to be in place through midnight Saturday.
“This is the FIRST Particularly Dangerous Situation Red Flag Warning issued in NWS Salt Lake City history. This is an exceptionally rare event,” the federal agency said in its warning.
A map of the area under the warning covered much of central and southwest Utah, with an area of the southwest, central and southern mountains also outlined as “particularly dangerous red flag.”
The particularly dangerous area includes the Cottonwood Fire, near the town of Beaver, which started Monday and had grown to covering almost nearly 71,000 acres by Thursday, 15 News reported. The fire forced evacuations.
The NWS warned that gusty winds and dry conditions would lead to rapid fire growth.
Utah also was dealing with the Iron Fire, which started June 19, and nearly destroyed the town of Eureka. The fire was about 27% contained Friday morning.
The fire danger led Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to issue executive order restricting fireworks statewide during the July 4 holiday, which marks the nation’s 250th birthday this year. The ban is in effect through July 5.
“Nothing about this decision was easy,” Cox said in a statement issued by his office Thursday.
“This is unlike anything we’ve seen in recent memory. We’re seeing fires spread farther and faster under conditions that defy historical expectations” Jamie Barnes, Utah state forester and director of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, added in the statement.
Cox allowed cities and local communities to set aside areas where fireworks could be safely used. The city of Provo announced it would enforce a citywide prohibition on fireworks and would not designate a safe area for fireworks.
“This year is different,” Provo Mayor Marsha Judkins said in a statement. “The wildfire danger facing our community is real, and protecting lives, homes, and our natural spaces must come first.”
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