If you are one of the thousands of Utah voters who have recently switched party registration from unaffiliated or Democrat to Republican and received a by-mail ballot this week that contained no Republican races, no need to worry, election officials say.
It’s just a timing issue.
Ballots were mailed by the June 9 deadline, and reflect registration status when mailings were prepared. But people who recently switched party registration to Republican, will indeed get the GOP ballots they want and the initial ballots without Republican races have been automatically voided.
“We’ve had lots of phone calls and emails because you know that this happens every primary. It happened in the presidential primary” in March, said Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen. She’s also sent emails to people who recently switched party status to explain the situation.
She explains that to have ballots mailed by the legal June 9 deadline, she had to send vendors lists of how people were registered as of May 15 — as did most other counties.
“But there have been a lot of changes since then,” she notes.
For example, former Democratic state senator Jim Dabakis urged Democrats to switch affiliation just for the primary to have a voice in the heavily Republican state for the many races here that are essentially decided in the GOP primary. Democratic leader Kem Gardner also wrote a Tribune op-ed urging the same saying the real Utah governor’s race is in June, not November, given that a Democrat hasn’t been elected to the office in 40 years.
So, people who re-registered since May 15 initially received a ballot for their former party. If they were unaffiliated, they may have received a ballot for nonpartisan primaries for local school boards.
“Most Democrats who re-affiliated understand that they received a Democratic ballot” and another may come because of the timing, Swensen said. “But many former unaffiliated voters that receive a nonpartisan school board ballot are like, ‘Oh, I registered with the Republican Party, but I only got a ballot with the school board.”
Former Gov. Jon Huntsman — a moderate Republican who is running for his old office, and has courted unaffiliated and Democratic voters — sent an email saying, “If you are a registered Republican and receive a ballot that doesn’t have mine and Michelle’s name [his running mate, Michelle Kaufusi] listed, please contact your county clerk right away.”
Swensen said all counties have the same practice to automatically void the earlier ballot sent to such people, “so it won’t count if they send it in.” And clerks send out a new one.
She said people have a deadline of June 19 to register or switch party affiliation and still receive a new by-mail ballot. Unaffiliated voters (but not Democrats) may also register as Republican at in-person election day voting centers or at early voting sites.
It is difficult to determine exactly how many people may be switching affiliation to vote in the Republican primary, but data suggests that it could be tens of thousands.
Data from Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox’s office show that the number of active Republican voters has risen by 48,631 since the March 3 presidential primary and by 69,253 since Jan. 1.
Nearly 29,000 voters have registered as Republican just since the May cutoff date for the initial mailing of ballots.
Unaffiliated voters decreased by 28,529 statewide since the March 3 presidential primary, by 49,454 since the first of the year, and by 24,058 since mid-May.
The number of active Democrats has actually increased, but so has the number of overall voters.
Overall, the number of total voters increased by 32,416 since the presidential primaries and by 53,841 since Jan. 1. The number of Democrats increased by 11,427 since the presidential primary, and by 30,221 since Jan. 1.
Current data show that 49.8% of active registered Utah voters are Republican; 30.7% are unaffiliated; 14.5% are Democrats; and 5% belong to minor parties.
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