Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson is good at her job overseeing the state’s elections. Those elections are free and fair and the vote-by-mail system that she and her recent predecessors have brought into being is justly popular with the state’s electorate.
So, of course, there is a move among the Republican supermajority in the Utah Legislature to take the job away from her, and all future lieutenant governors, and spend taxpayers money to conjure up a whole new state bureaucracy to do the same job.
Been there, done that. In 1976, 56% of Utah voters approved a change to the Utah Constitution that abolished the office of secretary of state and created the office of lieutenant governor, to run on a ticket with candidates for governor. What is the point of returning to a system we previously rejected?
Maybe it is because Henderson, also a Republican, respects the law and legitimate court orders issued in the furtherance thereof, to the annoyance of many in her party who want the unfettered right to gerrymander political districts.
Maybe it is because our lieutenant governor obeys state law, and the constitutional principle of states running their own elections, by denying illegal federal fishing expeditions for Utah’s voter rolls.
Maybe it is because her first name includes the letters “dei”.
A House committee Tuesday approved a pair of bills — HJR25 and HB529 — that would, between them, amend the Utah Constitution to restore the elective office of secretary of state to run the process.
Such a constitutional amendment would have to be approved by Utah voters. Which they should decline to do — as the move would be an unneeded change that seems designed to punish Henderson for doing her job.
There are other states that have a separate official to run elections, in some cases leaving the lieutenant governor with nothing to do but wait for the governor to expire or get appointed as ambassador to somewhere.
But there’s no need to do that here. The status quo carries no serious allegations of favoritism, and the idea that it is a conflict of interest for any elected official to run elections won’t be ameliorated by creating a new breed of elected official.
Utah voters should also continue to urge their lawmakers to drop another bill, HB479, which would basically torpedo the state mail-in voting system.
That bill was mysteriously reassigned from the House Government Operations Committee, where it belongs, and run through the Public Utilities and Energy Committee, which has nothing to do with running elections but might be more welcoming of its goal — to make voting more difficult for everyone.
Utah Republicans on the national stage, meanwhile, have been pushing the so-called SAVE America Act, which would impose unnecessarily harsh rules for registering and voting.
The argument for that law is that more difficult hurdles for eligible voters to prove their citizenship will keep illegal immigrants and others who cannot legally vote out of the system.
They tried that in Kansas a few years ago. More than 31,000 legally eligible voters were barred from registering for lack of acceptable paperwork, while nary an illegal voter was found.
It is not just Lt. Gov. Henderson who should be troubled by Legislative moves to curtail her authority and question her ability to run free and fair elections.
All Utahns should be offended by efforts to make voting more difficult, implying that we are a state of ballot-box stuffers.
Utahns should stand up and say out loud, like all the Whos down in Whoville, “We are here. And we are not cheating.”
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