Deidre Henderson has been fighting the good fight for our democracy for some time now. It must be reassuring for Utah’s lieutenant governor, as it is for the rest of us, that she is finally getting some big name help.
In recent days Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, U.S. Rep. Blake Moore and the Supreme Court of the United States have weighed in against attempts by the Trump administration to interfere with the states’ constitutional responsibility to run American elections.
The least all the rest of us can now do is to take advantage of our protected right to vote.
Henderson is under heavy pressure, including threats of criminal prosecution, from the federal so-called Department of Justice to provide a full, unredacted list of all registered Utah voters, with lots of personal data about each of them. Even though doing so would violate state privacy laws. Even though there is no federal law compelling such a document dump.
After far too long a silence, Cox and former Gov. Gary Herbert — both of whom also served as the state’s lite guv and chief election official — came to Henderson’s defense. Both rightly stressed that the federal government has no right or cause to be poking around in Utah’s election management, much less threaten criminal action against any state election official.
The Constitution clearly vests states with the job of running elections, a wise decentralization of the process. Congress has the power to impose some uniform national rules. But the president does not.
Moore, chairman of the House Republican Conference, correctly noted that largely GOP Utah would be rightly upset if a Democratic president were to poke his or her nose into our balloting.
It is a relief to see some Utah Republicans stand up for Henderson, for the Constitution and for Utah. Just as it is monotonously revolting to see Sen. Mike Lee — who used to be a champion of both states rights and resisting executive encroachment into congressional prerogatives — obsessively tweet away in support of the administration.
Repeated audits and reviews have shown no major problems with Utah’s elections. Accusations of widespread fraud or ballot box-stuffing are without merit.
Aid also arrived the other day in the form of a brief but firm U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibited the administration from monkeying around with any state’s mail-in ballot rules.
Our constitutional system only has a chance of working if each level and every branch stands up for its own authority. After far too many examples of Republicans and putative conservatives caving in to the administration, our Founders’ creation is showing welcome signs of life.
Now, it’s your turn.
Utah’s ballots are set to go out in the mail to every registered voter on Oct. 13. That gives voters plenty of time to study, ponder, read The Salt Lake Tribune’s upcoming series of voter guides — with no official, party or interest group looking over your shoulder — and return those ballots by Election Day, Nov. 3.
If mailed back to your county clerk, they must be sent in time to arrive on or before Election Day, no matter when they might have been postmarked. Or you can hand-deliver those completed ballots to any of the many official drop boxes scattered throughout the state, to a regular polling place, or to your county election office.
The state also has a useful online system to register to vote, to request a ballot if you didn’t get one, and even to track your ballot through the process. It’s all at vote.utah.gov.
Many of Utah’s top elected officials have gone to some pains and taken considerable political risk to stand up for Utahns’ right to vote. Don’t let it be for nothing.
Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.