Why there’s a call for the Utah County clerk to recuse himself from election oversight

Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson is being asked by a county commissioner to recuse himself from overseeing the election.
“Multiple people have reached out to me, everyone from average citizens to city council members to mayors to state legislators to statewide officeholders, all of whom are concerned about his ability to conduct the election in an unbiased manner,” Utah County Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner said. “I can’t disagree with them.”
She said Thursday she will ask the county’s other commissioners to join her in calling for Davidson to step aside to “get the unnecessary drama away from the election.” Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray confirmed Wednesday his office is investigating Davidson’s tracking of how politicians cast their ballots, first reported by the Deseret News.
Gardner pointed out that Davidson also has sided with write-in gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman, filing a brief supporting one of Lyman’s legal challenges to the election and suggesting Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who is on the ballot with Gov. Spencer Cox, should be “punished” for election fraud.
But the biggest issue Gardner says she’s hearing about is Davidson’s ballot tracking. Davidson, who discourages voting by mail, told the Deseret News earlier this week that state Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, returned his primary election ballot without a stamp, something he knew because he was keeping track of the way a “list of politicians” cast their ballots.
“The thing that these people are calling me about the most is the ballot tracking,” Gardner, a former county clerk, said.
“In order for him to accurately track these ballots, he has to be manually isolating them. The machines that scan our ballots, they don’t determine whether or not a ballot was returned via drop box or the mail. They don’t determine whether or not, if it came through the mail, it has a stamp or doesn’t have a stamp,” she said.
That’s raising concerns Davidson may be looking at more than just how a ballot arrived, she said.
“I’ve had the inquiry, ‘Is there a way he’s opening these ballots outside of their process and seeing how I voted?’ I’ve had multiple people asking me that. They just don’t have confidence that he’s not looking at their ballot if he’s isolating their ballot,” Gardner said.
Davidson did not respond to requests for comment, but told Fox 13 that Gardner’s recusal request “is just ridiculous.” He has said he did not look at who the politicians he tracked voted for and claimed the data he had about how their ballots were cast was available to anyone willing to pay a $15 fee.
Gardner said publicly available voter information only states whether someone voted in person or by returning the ballot mailed to them. She said when Davidson revealed that McKell mailed back his ballot without a stamp, and reportedly told state Rep. Stephanie Gricius, R-Eagle Mountain, that he knew she mailed back her primary ballot, “he’s absolutely violating their privacy.”
There’s also the issue of whether Davidson is “using taxpayer resources to further a personal vendetta with an elected legislator. He has called out Sen. McKell and the two of them have had a spat,” Gardner said, referring to their social media exchange during the primary over Davidson telling voters they needed to pay for the return postage if they wanted to mail back their ballots.
Now, Gardner said, Davidson is “utilizing county resources to gather information to utilize against elected officials with whom he disagrees. And that’s quite disturbing.” McKell confirmed he made his voter file private, something Gardner said about 40% of Utah County residents have done, including herself.
She said if there’s the potential that the law was violated, the county attorney’s investigation is appropriate.
“I’m not privy to that information,” Gardner said. “I’m not in that office and Jeff Gray is an independently elected official but I could see why he would feel that that investigation would be warranted.”
The Alliance for a Better Utah said Davidson should resign.
The left-leaning organization’s executive director, Jeff Merchant, said in a statement that “while Davidson might be citing technicalities to justify his unethical behavior, we find the pattern of behavior to be immoral and frankly dangerous. Additionally, undermining faith in our extremely secure election process is fueling harmful conspiracy theories and potentially inciting violence.”
Amid the calls for Davidson to recuse himself or resign, Henderson reported that as of Thursday morning, Utah County has the lowest turnout so far for the general election of any of the state’s 29 counties at just over 25%. Statewide, more than a third of Utahns have already voted and of the 608,488 ballots processed, 590,607 were returned by mail while 17,881 were cast in person.
Henderson’s office, which oversees elections, has not commented on the ballot tracking controversy.