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.
SANDY, Utah — Rodrigo De Paul and Luis Suárez scored one minute apart late in the second half, and Dayne St. Clair earned his second clean sheet of the season as Inter Miami beat Real Salt Lake 2-0 on Wednesday night.
Soccer legend Lionel Messi played the entire 90(+7) minutes of the game in his Utah debut, but failed to score despite late opportunities.
Miami (5-1-3) is unbeaten in its last eight regular-season games to sit in second in the Eastern Conference standings.
Salt Lake (5-1-2) had a six-game unbeaten run come to an end. RSL had secured multi-goal wins in its previous two games.
De Paul took a short corner from Telasco Segovia and curled a shot into the upper-right corner of the goal in the 82nd minute.
Suárez, who entered in the 75th, volleyed a left-footed shot past goalkeeper Rafael Cabral for his second goal of the season.
The only other meeting between the teams resulted in a 2-0 victory for Miami at home in the 2024 season opener.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Utah transfer Terrence Brown gives UNC a dynamic scoring guard with playmaking upside.
Utah transfer Terrence Brown, one of the top combo guards in the portal, has committed to North Carolina, giving the Tar Heels a high-scoring backcourt addition for next season.
Brown chose UNC over Kansas, Kentucky, Oregon, Ole Miss and USC. He is ranked the No. 8 combo guard and No. 38 overall transfer by 247Sports.
The 6-foot-3 rising senior averaged 19.9 points, 3.8 assists and 2.4 rebounds for Utah last season while shootingt 45.3% from the field and 32.7% from 3-point range. He earned All-Big 12 honorable mention.
His ability to both score and create for others makes him a natural candidate to replace former Tar Heels combo guard Seth Trimble.
Here is a full breakdown of what Brown brings to the tables.
What to be excited about
For starters, Brown is a high-level scorer. He scored 20 or more points 18 times and 25 or more points nine times last season. North Carolina’s backcourt had a player score 20 or more points only five times last season. Trimble accounted for four of those games, and Bogavac had one in UNC’s regular-season finale against Clemson.
Brown has shown he can be an effective passer as well. He posted a 27.7 assist percentage, an increase of 6.4 points from the previous season. That number rose to 28.1 percent in conference play, eighth-best in the Big 12.
He has shown he can be a capable defender, averaging 1.7 steals per game throughout his career. His career best was 2.2 steals per game in 2024-25 with Fairleigh Dickinson, which led the Northeast Conference.
What to be concerned about
The only concern UNC should have with Brown is his ability to play with players just as good as, and possibly better than, he is. The worry should not be that he may intentionally ballhog. In fact, he may simply try to do too much.
Because he was on two mediocre programs such as FDU and Utah, Brown had free rein to shoot himself out of slumps as he was the No. 1 scorer and the primary ballhandler. The last two seasons, Brown has ranked in the top 15 in usage rate and has averaged 16.4 and 15.4 shots per game. While his offensive rating improved at Utah, going from 96.8 to 108.1, his effective field-goal percentage was still below 50 percent at 48.6.
He will have to learn not to put too much pressure on himself as he plays alongside teammates such as Neoklis Avdalas, Jarin Stevenson and possibly Henri Veesaar, if Veesaar returns to Chapel Hill.
How He Fits at UNC
Brown should fit in just nicely in Chapel Hill and will provide a much-needed boost to its backcourt.
With UNC’s stronger supporting cast and a coach with a championship pedigree in Michael Malone, Brown will be pushed to process the game faster. He will need to read the floor quickly, use his first step to collapse the defense or kick out to shooters, and he could form an intriguing pick-and-roll duo with both Avdalas and Veesaar.
Brown’s athleticism could be a difference-maker at UNC. All he has to do is improve his shot selection and overall efficiency.
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SALT LAKE CITY — A California man in Utah, as part of his duties with the National Guard, is accused of trying to solicit sex from a young teenager.
Joshua Ruben Rodriguez, 29, of Fresno, was charged Tuesday in 3rd District Court with attempted rape of a child, a first-degree felony, and enticement of a minor, a second-degree felony.
The investigation began when an agent with the Utah State Bureau of Investigation posed as a 13-year-old girl on a “popular social media site … in an attempt to locate and apprehend adults attempting to have sexual contact with children,” according to charging documents.
On April 16, Rodriguez sent the agent a message — believing he was talking to a teen girl — that stated, “I’ll be direct with you, I would like to get to know you and (have sex with) your mind into a daze to where you feel like a woman,” according to charging documents.
When the “girl” asked if he had a problem with her age, Rodriguez replied, “I don’t have a problem with your age,” the charges state.
The agent told Rodriguez to meet at an apartment complex in Salt Lake County where the girl lived, claiming her mother would be gone. When Rodriguez arrived, he was taken into custody, the charges state.
“(Rodriguez) does not have ties to Utah. He is a resident of Fresno, California. (He) was in town as part of his military service with the California National Guard,” prosecutors stated in charging documents while requesting he be held without bail pending trial.
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