Republican leaders at neighborhood caucuses this year pushed the idea of mail-in ballots rather than in-person polling as a way to increase voter turnout.
And some campaigns, particularly in Utah County, encouraged supporters to get mail-in ballots, thinking that would ensure more voting and help their cause.
It turns out that all those good intentions may have unintended consequences.
A number of Utah County Republicans have complained that they did not receive their absentee ballots until just recently, making the turn-around time for mailing them in before Tuesday's primary election deadline tight if not impossible.
The problem does not affect Mormon missionaries or military personnel living abroad, whose absentee ballots were mailed out 45 days in advance of the election.
Utah County Clerk Bryan Thompson said the difficulty imposed on voters was caused largely by the push by political parties themselves toward mail-in ballots.
Normally, he said, the county sends out about 3,500 absentee ballots. This year, there were more than 11,000 applications, putting unforeseen pressures on the clerks to get the ballots out in time.
Thompson urged folks who still don't have their ballots to call his office and the ballots will be delivered personally to their homes.
Not only has the influx in absentee ballots caused havoc in the office, it also has depressed early in-person voting, which Thompson said is considerably down this year compared to past elections.
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Frustrations abound • The late ballot mailings is just the latest debacle Utah County Republicans have had to deal with lately.
Republican officials and GOP campaigns throughout the county complained last spring about delays in getting delegate lists posted after the neighborhood caucuses. Some complained that the delay in posting the lists made it difficult for campaigns to adequately reach the delegates with their messages before the county convention in April.
That problem, of course, was the party's problem. It wasn't a county issue.
Another party problem arose a couple of years ago when party officials collected money contributed by Republicans attending neighborhood caucuses but then threw away the envelopes the money came in without recording the identities of the contributors.
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While Nero fiddled — The Utah Legislature finally increased the number of liquor licenses available to restaurants during its special session last week, but its fiddling over the issue in past legislative sessions has left one economic sector in flames.
The Legislature approved 50 new full-service liquor licenses for restaurants and 40 limited (beer and wine) licences.
But it ignored the issue during the general session, despite a long waiting list for licenses that were not available and the pleadings of several national chains that said they were ready to build new restaurants in Utah but were holding off due to the lack of liquor licences.
Well, the Utah Department of Workforce Services' unemployment report for May revealed that only one sector lost jobs in the state.
That would be the hospitality sector, where employment fell by 1,400 jobs from the same month in 2011.
