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SALT LAKE CITY — Despite calling for a recount in a paper-thin race for the Utah House of Representatives, a longtime state legislator and former House speaker failed to advance to the November election.
Rep. Melvin Brown, R-Coalville, requested a recount last week after losing in the Republican primary race for House District 53 to Morgan County Council Chairman Logan Wilde by eight votes in June.
In the recount, Brown gained one vote and two additional votes went to Wilde, giving the challenger a nine-vote victory. The final vote tally was 2,492 for Wilde to Brown's 2,483, according to results released Wednesday.
Brown said he's disappointed with the primary loss, but he's more concerned that some rural voters may have been "disenfranchised" during the election. Sixty-four ballots were disqualified because they were postmarked on June 28 — the day of the primary election — not by the June 27 due date.
"A race is a race. … We have to deal with what we got," he said. "But tell me of an average person who knows when a letter is supposed to be postmarked. They just know they put it in the mail on a certain day and assume it's going to be postmarked, don't they?"
That's a concern shared by Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox.
Brown's narrow loss, perhaps affected by those 64 disqualified ballots, prompted Cox to issue a statement Wednesday charging clerks and lawmakers to find a solution to ensure fewer ballots are disqualified due to missed postmark deadlines.
“As election officials, we work tirelessly year-round to ensure Utahns can vote in a convenient and easy to understand process,” Cox said. “Over the past several years, we have informed the Legislature and the U.S. Postal Service of the potential impact this issue could have on elections. As we move forward to future elections, I encourage the Legislature, the U.S. Postal Service and election officials to work together to find a solution to this matter.”
Although instructions state that ballots must be postmarked before Election Day, elections officials acknowledged it is possible that some voters thought they had met the deadline by submitting their ballot to the mail the day before the election but after the postmark deadline for that day.
Rural voters face earlier postmark deadlines on the day before an election because mail can take longer to reach the Salt Lake City Post Office, where it is officially postmarked. If the ballots are dropped in mailboxes after postal workers pick up the mail, they won't be delivered until the next day.
District 53 includes all rural voters, encompassing parts of Daggett, Duchesne, Morgan, Rich and Summit counties.
In a letter sent to Cox on Saturday, Brown requested that absentee ballots be counted, even though they were disqualified because they were postmarked one day past the deadline.
"The lieutenant governor believes it is his obligation to do everything possible within the framework of the law to count all votes cast," election officials said in Wednesday's release, but there was "no way" to determine if the 64 disqualified ballots were mailed on the day before the election, as required by law.
That's why those ballots couldn't be counted and remain unopened, leaving it unknown whether they would have changed the outcome of the race.
"To me, (my loss) isn't the issue," Brown said. "I just hope that ultimately we know that every ballot is counted, and we know legitimately and rightfully who the winner and loser is."
With the primary victory, Wilde advances to face Democrat Cole Capener in the November general election.
Brown, the longest-serving member of the House GOP caucus, first took office in 1986.
