After losing his bid for governor, Phil Lyman, backed with a conservative national group that has made repeated claims of fraud in elections, is demanding the state turn over a complete list of Utah’s registered voters.
Under Utah law, information cannot be released for those protected groups and other voters who asked to have their data kept private prior to May 2020 — when the law was changed to limit the ability of voters to keep their records confidential.
But Lyman and his attorneys from the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), in a lawsuit filed Friday, argue that the National Voter Registration Act trumps state law and requires the lieutenant governor to provide Lyman with the complete, unredacted voter registration file.
J. Christian Adams, PILF general counsel and president, said after this story was first published that the lawsuit is not seeking records of individuals who are victims of domestic or dating violence, law enforcement officers and military personnel who have requested their records be withheld.
If Lyman, a former state lawmaker, prevails, anyone who requests the file would also have the same unfettered access to voter rolls.
A spokesperson for Lt. Gov Deidre Henderson, whose office oversees state elections, said the office does not comment on pending lawsuits.
Previously, the office rejected Lyman’s claims because “it does not have discretion to ignore state statute and provide unrestricted access to the state’s voter rolls as you have requested,” according to Lyman’s lawsuit.
Adam told several dozen of Lyman’s supporters who attended a “meet and greet” at the Capitol on Friday morning that access to voter information is an issue of transparency.
“How do we keep the voter rolls clean and accurate?” he said. “What records do you use to figure out who’s dead? What do you do to remove people who moved from Utah from the voter rolls?”
A legislative audit released in December found that 1,400 voters who were “likely deceased” remained on the state’s voter rolls, and two appeared to have voted in the 2023 municipal elections.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Supporters watch Phil Lyman announce a lawsuit to gain access to Utah voting records at a news conference at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Friday, June 6, 2025.
In April, the lieutenant governor’s office posted on social media that it had been conducting quarterly audits of voter rolls. When the audits first began at the end of 2023, there was a 9% error rate, the office said, but in the most recent analysis, the rate fell to 1%. The Salt Lake Tribune requested a detailed breakdown of the problems identified, but the office said that information will not be available for several months.
Lyman has dismissed that work, saying that it is an example of the fox auditing the hen house.
Without having access to the entire voter database, Lyman contends he cannot verify that the registration list is accurately maintained by the lieutenant governor’s office and that people aren’t voting illegally.
Lyman first requested full access to the voter rolls in 2024, during his failed campaign for governor. At the time, he was accusing Gov. Spencer Cox and Henderson of being illegitimate candidates, alleging they hadn’t gathered enough valid signatures to qualify for the Republican primary. Cox qualified for the primary ballot by gathering tens of thousands of Republican voters’ signatures ahead of the GOP nominating convention, where Lyman received 67.5% of delegates’ support.
Lyman filed repeated lawsuits, including one petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to have Cox and Henderson disqualified. All of those lawsuits were dismissed and the Supreme Court petition was rejected without comment.
“I’m not interested in election integrity because I ran for governor,” Lyman told a crowd of about 100 people on the steps of the Capitol later Friday morning. “I ran for governor because I’m interested in election integrity.”
Adams said this is a larger issue.
“This is not about a redo of a past election. Let’s be clear, guys, I know you all have an opinion on that,” he told Lyman’s supporters. “This is about the future. This is about transparency.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Phil Lyman with supporters after announcing a lawsuit to gain access to Utah voting records at a news conference at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Friday, June 6, 2025.
According to 1993’s National Voter Registration Act, what Adams said some may remember as the “motor voter” law allowing Americans to register to vote when they get a driver’s license, “Each State shall maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters … .”
Adams said the lawsuit alleges Utah statute hides list maintenance records, “namely voter rolls,” from the public.
PILF has filed similar lawsuits in numerous states seeking access to voter rolls, accusing states of failing to purge voter rolls or allowing ineligible voters and noncitizens to vote.
In Michigan, for example, PILF sued the secretary of state in 2021, claiming there were tens of thousands of deceased voters who remained eligible to vote. Three years later, a judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying that the record showed Michigan’s rolls were being updated on an ongoing basis and the suit lacked merit.
In 2016, PILF published personal information of voters, including Social Security numbers, online, accusing the individuals of voting illegally. Several voters whose information was shared sued and PILF retracted the information, acknowledging it was incorrect and the individuals had not committed felonies.
Adams, during the meet and greet, accused a Tribune journalist of trying to “scare everyone” if the newspaper were to report on the level of information that PILF and Lyman would have access to if they prevail in their Utah lawsuit.
When asked what data of Utah’s 1.8 million registered voters would be available if they win the lawsuit, Adams said “the public record.”
Adams said personal identifying information, like a date of birth, is important to distinguish between different John Smiths.
Utah updates its voter rolls relying on a nonprofit national clearinghouse of voter information called the Electronic Registration Information Center, more commonly known as ERIC, a collaborative project between states. Members, including Utah, share voter registration and motor vehicle department data to help strike the names of the deceased and nonresidents.
But Lyman and other election conspiracists have said Utah should withdraw from ERIC. A bill to do just that failed during the last legislative session, with lawmakers opting instead to address voter roll maintenance in a sweeping elections reform bill.
Passed and signed by the governor, the law requires the lieutenant governor to develop procedures ensuring voter rolls are audited at least 90 days before a primary or general election; register with the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program to check voters’ citizenship; and investigate when by-mail ballots are returned as undeliverable.
Update, 4:25 p.m. • The story has been updated to include a clarifying statement from Adams that they are not seeking access to voting records of domestic violence victims, police officers and military personnel who have asked that their records be withheld.
