Judge tosses suit from GOP candidates over delayed Salt Lake County mail-in ballots

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

SALT LAKE CITY — A judge has tossed a lawsuit waged against Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen by her Republican challenger and another GOP candidate.

Third District Judge Robert Faust ruled Monday that a "slight delay" for some voters who received their mail-in ballots a week later in October than Swensen had planned did not amount to a violation of Utah's election law.

The suit from Swensen's opponent, Rozan Mitchell, and a state Senate candidate, Dan McCay, alleged that thousands of ballots were not mailed when a first batch was sent out Oct. 8.

Swensen testified Monday that she and her staff did indeed mail thousands more ballots over the rest of October, but that's largely because voters continued to register with the county or update their addresses.

The suit filed Thursday sought a list of voters who didn't receive a ballot in a timely way. McCay previously called the clerk's office seeking such an inventory but was told it didn't exist, he said, demonstrating what he calls a lack of transparency on the park of the clerk's office.

Swensen, who has held the post for 27 years, suggested otherwise.

"I don’t have a list like that because no one received their ballots late," she explained.

An envelope-printing issue with a Washington State-based company caused a delay in the mailing of about 5,500 ballots that should have gone out the week of Oct. 15, Swensen said, but they went out the following week, and the lag does not conflict with Utah's elections law. The names of those 5,500 people could be made available through a public records request, she said.

Stewart Peay, an attorney for the Republican candidates, said the data request would not have yielded answers until after the election on Tuesday, but Swensen said her office can expedite its responses.

Faust declined to order the release of the records, saying the candidates might have filed a public records request "as they could have and should have done and still are entitled to do."

McCay said news reports, including on KSL.com, suggested potentially thousands of voters didn't get a ballot. But he acknowledged he may have misread the coverage and it could have contained errors.

After the hearing, Swensen said she believed the suit was "frivolous" and a political tactic that lacked merit. She said her office Monday morning only received a few phone calls and was largely empty, but the scene would have been much more frenzied if a large number of voters never received their ballots.

Mitchell, who was Swensen's elections director and took an unpaid leave of absence to run, denied that politics were behind the suit and said several people she has talked to had not received ballots.

McCay, of Riverton, and now a representative in the Utah House, said he will request the information under Utah's open records law.

"When a county clerk is reporting that there might be delays or there are issues with ballots, you have to make an issue of it," McCay said. "You have to make sure there's transparency."

Utah law requires county clerks to mail the ballots no later than 21 days before an election to those who are already registered. Swensen's office made the deadline with over a week to go, she said, sending the envelopes on Oct. 8 to about 495,000 registered voters.

Swensen went "above and beyond what the law requires," said David Miller, a Salt Lake County deputy district attorney who defended her.

Information on voting locations is available at got-vote.org for Salt Lake County or vote.utah.gov.