Henderson says “some changes” are needed after several Election Day issues in Utah County

SALT LAKE CITY — Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said Wednesday that she believes some reforms are needed in the Election Day process after several voting problems Tuesday — primarily in Utah County — led to delays and workarounds, including a flight to Arizona for more ballot paper .

“There will certainly be some changes, absolutely,” she told reporters at a briefing at the Utah Capitol on Wednesday.

The first poll results for Utah were released just after 10 p.m. Tuesday, two hours after polls closed. Henderson — the state's top election official — had instructed counties to wait to release preliminary numbers until everyone in line had voted at 8 p.m.

Some of the delays were blamed on voter turnout, but paper and printer problems also caused confusion in queues in Utah County.

Aaron Davidson, the county's elections director, said there were printer problems at the Highland and Pleasant Grove polling stations Tuesday night because older printers ran out of toner. Printer problems also delayed voting lines in Payson and Orem.

Election officials also had to print thousands of emergency ballots at the Utah County Polling Processing Center in Provo, which were delivered to the two affected polling locations.

Henderson said Utah County had about 10,000 ballots ready for Election Day, but the county had “burned about half of them by mid-morning.” There also wasn't enough additional paper of the right size and material statewide to send to Utah County.

The situation seemed so dire that the state flew a plane to Arizona on Tuesday to pick up the right type of paper, while also helping the county find a printer to print the right paper stock it had on hand I could cut it to size, she said.

“It turned out that (Davidson) didn't need the Arizona newspaper, but we wouldn't have known that until it was far too late to mitigate this problem,” she said.

Davidson said Tuesday night that he was not aware of anyone being turned away from voting despite the hiccups. He added that polling stations accepted thousands more voters than expected, leading to a state of emergency.

However, election officials in Utah do not believe the turnout was unusual for a presidential election. At 43.8%, Utah County had the lowest percentage of early or mail-in ballots among the state's 29 counties entering Election Day. However, it is unclear whether this was taken into account in in-person voter turnout.

Long lines also formed across the state.

“There were high numbers of provisional or same-day voters,” Henderson said, adding that she believes students, first-time voters and population growth since the last presidential election may have played a role. “There are many reasons and we will look into it and find out why we had so many personal messages.”

The lieutenant governor praised Utah County voters for enduring the delays and county election workers for enduring the problems. Instead, she blamed Davidson for “some lack of planning” that she said led to the delays.

While her office collects and distributes election results, Henderson said county clerks are responsible for figuring out how elections are handled in their respective counties. This includes all voting logistics, from polling stations to ballot papers and printer ink.

Your office regularly reviews the voting process after each election. What happened in Utah County will likely be at the top of the next round.

“We will look into this in the future,” she said.

It wasn't immediately clear how much the flight to Arizona cost, but Gov. Spencer Cox said it probably cost a few thousand dollars. State officials will consider whether they believe Utah County should pay the costs.

Both he and Henderson also defended their decision to withhold election results until late Tuesday.

The governor said he believes releasing information while people were still in line would have led to voter intimidation or interference. That's why he contradicted major news outlets that declared Donald Trump and John Curtis the winners of the state's presidential and Senate races while people were still waiting in line.

The only other major incident occurred in Salt Lake County. The counting was paused for about an hour Tuesday afternoon after a poll worker found a white substance on a ballot that was being processed.

Although the powder was found to be harmless, Henderson added Wednesday that the state is investigating the incident to ensure the case was not malicious in any way.

“If this is an attempt to intimidate, harass or delay or disrupt the conduct of the election, that is unacceptable,” she said.

Contributor: Jacob Freeman, Dan Rascon and Lindsay Aerts