Here's what Utah's latest election audit found

SALT LAKE CITY — A legislative audit found that state and local officials have taken steps to improve election administration, but several repeated "minor" errors should be addressed.

The report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor General said the Utah lieutenant governor's office, which oversees state elections, has "demonstrated a commitment to election integrity," but should take a more hands-on approach with county clerks.

"It has generally taken a limited approach to oversight, sometimes deferring to county elected officials' implementation decisions rather than actively monitoring and correcting noncompliance," the report states. "This may contribute to the errors we observed over multiple election audits."

Auditors presented their findings to top state lawmakers on Tuesday. The report is the latest in a series of regular looks at the election system as required by state law.

"We repeat what we have said in the past," the report states, "that we did not observe significant fraud in Utah's election system."

Here's what the auditors found.

Recommendations for lieutenant governor

Auditors praised Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson's office for working to improve Utah's election system. However, they said, providing assistance and training to county clerks only goes so far.

"While training and standardization help build knowledge and skills for clerks, oversight is necessary to ensure that clerks correctly implement the training," the audit states. "More direct oversight can help mitigate the deficiencies we have seen since we began our election audits in 2022."

As part of that oversight, the auditors recommended Henderson's office develop a "formalized approach for using its enforcement authority. Doing so can help it know which counties may need more oversight and reduce the likelihood of repeated errors through corrective actions."

In a written response, Henderson said she tries to strike a balance between oversight and enforcement with the state's 29 county clerks.

"My office gives careful consideration to the proper balance of state versus local control, trusted working relationships, and a county clerk's direct accountability to the voters who elected them," Henderson wrote. "The addition of stricter state enforcement requirements could lead to the erosion of personal responsibility a clerk has to discharge the duties of their office with fidelity."

2026-28 Elections 2026

The auditors also recommended the lieutenant governor's office fine-tune its process for analyzing voter rolls and removing deceased voters.

Additionally, the audit shed further light on recent efforts to remove noncitizens from Utah's voter rolls. As KSL reported in May, out of more than 2 million registered voters, state election officials found 27 who were noncitizens who were removed from the voter database. Officials also found 25 voters who were likely not citizens, along with 5,007 voters whose citizenship could not be confirmed either way.

Since then, according to the audit, around 1,500 of those voters have provided proof of citizenship, while approximately 100 were removed from the voter rolls. The citizenship status of around 3,400 of those individuals remains unverified, meaning they can only vote in federal elections.

"Elections in Utah have never been better," Henderson wrote, "due to the hard work and innovation by my staff, elected county clerks and their staff, and recommendations from auditors."

San Juan, Utah and Wasatch counties

The report follows up on a similar election audit completed in 2024. In this latest one, auditors examined election processes in three counties — Utah, Wasatch and San Juan — to see how each is implementing the recommendations from two years ago.

Auditors wrote that "clerks generally administer elections well," but found that each of the three counties only implemented one of the two recommendations for conducting post-audit elections — and none of them fully enacted recommendations for reconciling ballot counts.

"While many of these issues are relatively minor, they represent opportunities to strengthen election administration within the county," the report states.

The report identified an instance where a voter cast two ballots in Wasatch County. Auditors said the voter's in-person vote credit was not manually uploaded into the system before the voter's mail-in ballot was counted, leading to their vote being counted twice. The report recommended steps to "mitigate the chances that someone can vote twice."

Wasatch County Clerk Joey Granger objected to that finding in her response, noting that "the processing for mail-in and in-person voting is done by separate systems and lags between the two systems are unavoidable."

"The county is diligent in its reconciliation process and in syncing the two systems," she wrote. "The clerk's review process was successful in identifying the double votes raised in the audit report. The clerk did not identify any additional reasonable actions that could further mitigate this risk."

In Utah County, some volunteers did not take state-required training before conducting a post-election audit, according to the report. The audit also criticized County Clerk Aaron Davidson for not designating a separate election official to oversee an audit of candidate petition signatures since he was on the June ballot running for reelection. Instead, his office performed it, but Davidson voluntarily did not participate.

The report recommends that the Utah County clerk create a system to review and learn election requirements — something the county lacks.

"We believe this contributed to the various instances of partial compliance," the audit states. "It is also concerning, given clerks have the statutory duty to learn and comply with election requirements."

Davidson, who ended up losing his reelection bid, outlined the steps his office would take in response to the audit. But in a written response, he disagreed with some of the findings and implied that auditors were "nitpicking" work done by county clerks.

"While this performance audit is well-intentioned, we feel it went beyond its intended purpose by identifying minor mistakes and creating an environment of contention," wrote Davidson. "It is already difficult to find and retain well-qualified election workers, and this level of scrutiny will only drive more of them away and make it more difficult to hire election workers."

Davidson also said he disagreed with the auditor's assessment that candidate nomination petition packets were incorrectly processed, among other things.

"We do not concur that poll workers did anything wrong in the last election," he wrote.

In San Juan County, auditors said officials made errors in tracking ballots they received. The audit recommended that the county clerk fully implement proper procedures for election administration and better train poll workers to "ensure they can properly update a voter's address."

San Juan County Clerk/Auditor Lyman Duncan said his office is in the process of implementing each of the audit recommendations.

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