False claims of election fraud followed Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson into office after their 2024 reelection, primarily spread by members of their party.
Now lawmakers, predominantly Republicans, want to take election oversight away from the lieutenant governor. They’re advancing a proposal to amend the Utah Constitution to give that role to a newly created and independently elected secretary of state.
“We have a bit of an inherent distrust of elections, no matter if the actors are good — and they are," Rep. Lisa Shepherd, R-Provo, told the House Government Operations Committee on Tuesday.
“My bill,” she continued, “has nothing to do with the people that are currently in there, or people in the past. Mine is strictly about structure. It’s not about personalities, parties, politics or people.”
She added that she didn’t want Utah’s elected lieutenant governor to be tainted by the “muck of elections and the controversy that surrounds it.”The new secretary of state would also be elected under Shepherd’s legislation, although it provides that the lieutenant governor would make decisions for races in which the secretary of state is a candidate. The committee gave near-unanimous approval to proposed amendment HJR25 and the accompanying HB529, with one Democrat voting against it.
To make this year’s ballot, Shepherd’s resolution would need the backing of two-thirds of both the House and the Senate. With just a week-and-a-half left in this year’s legislative session, it’s unclear whether it has the time — or the support — to clear both chambers.
GOP senators have so far indicated they would be satisfied with simply codifying a requirement that the lieutenant governor draft a plan to recuse themself from handling races they are competing in. A bill from Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, would mandate a “conflict of interest avoidance plan” for the lieutenant governor.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson gives her inaugural address during the inauguration ceremony for Gov. Spencer Cox in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025.
Henderson drafted such a plan in 2024, and selected former Lt. Gov. Greg Bell to handle any election-related problems that arose in the gubernatorial contest.
“The biggest clash we’ve always had is separation when the lieutenant governor is going to be on the ballot,” Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, told reporters Wednesday. “And if we fix that, I’m not sure there’s a reason for that [secretary of state] position — for extra staff, for all the costs that are associated with that.”
“There’s nothing broken,” Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, added.
The possible constitutional amendment comes 46 years after 56% of Utah voters approved changing the state constitution to eliminate a secretary of state position, create the office of lieutenant governor and require that they run on the same ticket as the governor.
Shepherd’s resolution is among repeated attempts by some GOP lawmakers to overhaul Utah’s elections system in the years since President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and began spreading lies about the results.
A Republican, Henderson has consistently challenged efforts from the head of her party to instill uncertainty in the integrity of elections — a position that has at times created tension between her office and the supermajority-GOP Legislature.
Henderson declined to endorse Trump in 2024 despite Cox having done so, telling The Salt Lake Tribune, “I have a real struggle with people who do know better and should know better at the top of Republican politics, who are sowing doubt and chaos and confusion for political gain — no matter who it is."
And last year, she refused to hand over the entirety of Utah’s voter databases to his administration because she said it didn’t have a lawful purpose for requesting them.
Utah’s House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, on the other hand, was among a national group of lawmakers who signed a letter demanding a 50-state audit of 2020 election results and a convening of the U.S. House of Representatives to “decide the rightful winner of the election.”
Lawmakers passed a bill from Schultz in 2023 to require biennial legislative audits of Utah’s election systems. The 2024 audit conducted under that law found no “significant fraud,” but identified two deceased voters who cast ballots and three individuals who voted twice over the three elections that were reviewed.
Last year, Henderson’s office voiced concerns about how an effort to end Utah’s vote-by-mail elections system might disenfranchise some voters. Ahead of becoming law, the bill was amended to instead require Utahns to opt in to vote by mail every eight years.
Another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, introduced a bill to create an independent elections office amid the 2024 gubernatorial primary race, but shelved it after reported pushback from Cox’s office.
If successful, Shepherd’s proposal would appear on the November ballot alongside two other possible constitutional amendments approved by lawmakers: one would require the support of 60% of voters to pass any citizen-introduced ballot initiatives that would raise taxes, and another would end the requirement that constitutional amendments be printed in newspapers two months ahead of an election.
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