Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- Phil Lyman sues Lt. Gov. Henderson for access to Utah voter data.
- Lyman claims Utah's privacy laws conflict with federal voter registration laws.
- The lawsuit argues restricted access impedes public oversight of voter rolls.
SALT LAKE CITY — Phil Lyman filed a federal lawsuit against Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson on Friday, seeking access to voter registration data and arguing that Utah's law allowing voters to make their information private runs afoul of federal law.
Lyman, a former state lawmaker and Republican gubernatorial candidate, has long claimed Utah's elections are fraudulent and sought to obtain the complete voter rolls after losing the GOP primary to Gov. Spencer Cox last summer. Lyman regularly accused Henderson, the state's top election official, of fraud and tried to have her and Cox thrown out of office.
"Now in Utah, they say that we have the gold standard of elections," Lyman told a crowd of some 150 supporters outside of the state Capitol on Friday. "It is the fool's gold standard of elections. And if you believe it, you are a fool. I'm telling you, I've never seen anything more deliberately blocked and obfuscated."
His latest lawsuit, however, doesn't allege any malfeasance on Henderson's part but says Utah's law on private voter records conflicts with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires that voter registration records be public. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court with the help of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative firm based in Virginia that has filed similar suits in other states and made claims of voter fraud.
A spokesman for Henderson said the Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office does not comment on active or pending litigation.
J. Christian Adams, the president and general counsel of the foundation, called Utah's law "extreme," saying most other states allow registered voters and campaigns to access voter data. Adams served on a controversial Advisory Commission on Election Integrity during President Donald Trump's first term in office.
Utah's voter file includes information on voter names, addresses, birth years and vote history, which shows the elections a person voted in but not how they voted. State law creates three categories of voters: public, private and withheld. Anyone can view the information for public voters, but only officials, political parties and campaigns have access to those who mark it private.
Voters can be qualified as a "protected individual" and have their record withheld if they are a victim of domestic violence, a member of the military, a law enforcement officer or a public figure, meaning their data cannot be released.
The law was changed on May 12, 2020, to create the current tiered system of privacy. Lyman's lawsuit notes that anyone who asked that their information be kept "private" before that date was grandfathered in as a "protected individual," whether they met the other requirements or not.
"Because of this," the lawsuit states, "there are voters who are classified as 'withheld,' who are not victims of domestic violence or dating violence, law enforcement officers or in one of the other categories listed."
The lawsuit said that as of Nov. 3, 2020, more than 110,000 voters in Salt Lake County had their records withheld, which Lyman and his allies argued makes it impossible for average Utahns to conduct oversight of the voter rolls.
"Basically, what we have here is a two-tiered system, right? One for regular, everyday people and the other for the elites of our state," said Goud Maragani, the local counsel on the lawsuit. "And that's what this lawsuit is about. Right now, a regular member of Utah, a citizen, has no way to be able to go and verify that those voter rolls are being properly maintained. You can't tell if your vote is being protected by the people in power, and this lawsuit is aimed at fixing that."
Adams claimed his organization has helped identify dead or otherwise improper voters on rolls in other states. A legislative audit published last year found over 1,400 voters on the rolls in the state who were likely deceased, though only half of them were marked as active voters, and only two cast ballots.
Lyman's lawsuit asks the courts to order that Henderson turn over to him "the full and complete statewide voter registration list, including registrations classified as 'private' or improperly classified as 'withheld.'" He also asks to be reimbursed for "reasonable attorney's fees" and costs of litigation.
Adams said there are no plans to post the private voter information online if it is turned over, but a ruling in Lyman's favor could give anyone access to the complete list of Utah voters. He said the lawsuit only seeks information on voters who were grandfathered in as "withheld" voters, not those who have been allowed to withhold their records because of a domestic violence incident, because they are a member of law enforcement or the military or are a public figure.
Adams previously settled a lawsuit in 2019 after doxxing the names, phone numbers, addresses and Social Security numbers of individuals removed from Virginia's voter rolls for allegedly registering to vote as noncitizens. A lawsuit said the individuals in question were U.S. citizens, claiming reports released by the Public Interest Legal Foundation were attempts to intimidate voters.
