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OGDEN — In a perfect world, you shouldn't be able to pick your election chief out of a lineup.
That is the opinion of Randy Hatch, the person in charge of elections in Weber County.
"Like a good referee, we should be anonymous," he says, speaking for himself and his colleagues throughout the state and country, "nobody should even notice we're there."
Alas, the upcoming election of 2022 will afford no such opportunity.
For two long years, ever since former President Donald Trump alleged election fraud after losing the 2020 presidential election — by a mere seven million votes — voting integrity, or lack thereof, has commanded an inordinate share of public attention.
The fact that Trump's allegations, and those of his acolytes, have been summarily found to lack one key ingredient — evidence — has somehow failed to slow the trend.
This is true even in a place like Weber County, a Republican-leaning county where Trump won in 2020 with two-thirds of the vote. Nonetheless, election deniers are looking in nooks and crannies and turning over rocks searching for improprieties.
This information comes from no less an authority than Mr. Hatch, who has been running elections here since he was first elected as county clerk/auditor in 2010 "and I've never seen this kind of scrutiny."
He gets emails that warn, "we're watching you." He's had people say, "I know you're in on it."
Hatch is quick to point out that this represents what he believes to be an infinitesimally small portion of the electorate.
"I'd say well less than 1%," he says. "But they're very active and very assertive and very vocal.
"Then there's a little bit larger group that probably agrees with them but doesn't necessarily promote it; and after that there's a bigger group of voters who go, 'Gol, I'm hearing a lot about voting and there's a lot of issues,' so they're uneasy even though they can't identify anything."
The impetus on running a super clean, super transparent election has never been higher.
"Election officials don't want to be on the front page — the candidates should be on the front page," says Hatch. "But unfortunately that's changed. 2020 brought it to a totally different level. We have to be more assertive in telling our story. We have to let people know that, yes, we do have plans, safeguards and security measures in place. The system is fair, it's solid and it's sound."
When the poll watchers come around next Tuesday — and he hopes for "lots of eyes" from both parties — his plan is to greet them with open arms, take them on a tour and explain the process in as much detail as they want.
How confident is he that he can dissuade their fears?
"That's my dream, to educate everybody, to show them how we do this, how sound the system is, how many checks and balances are in place, how super hard it would be for someone to commit fraud. If they see that, they'll be like, 'Wow, there is nothing to see here, this is right on.'"
Then again, he is not so naive to think he can convince the partisans who have already made up their minds.
"My concern is that the people who are sure there's fraud will find or generate enough smoke to not trust these elections either."
They will remain determined to validate the unvalidatable — that American voting has been hijacked by cheaters and crooks who conspiratorially manipulate the system.
If you want to wind Hatch up, get him going on that.
"The whole idea of infiltration of the voting machine companies and systems, I'll put that up next to the flat earth conspiracy," he says. "For that kind of fraud to be perpetrated through all 50 states, to involve so many different agencies, both federal, state and local, that would have to be complicit in the fraud, and not have a single whistleblower …"
He doesn't dignify the sentence by ending it.
Instead he says, "I'm looking forward to a nice, good, solid election" as the best way to answer the critics.
And even if he is more in the spotlight than he'd prefer, he's glad he gets to be on the front lines.
He reflected back to the early days of 2010, when Republican party officials first approached him about running for the clerk/auditor position.
"I said, 'well, what does clerk/auditor do?' And they said, 'They handle your money and your vote.' And I'm like, 'Really, they pay you for that?'"
Yep, and this year he's earning every penny.
