SALT LAKE CITY — An audit ordered conducted by the Utah State Legislature's Auditor-General found that Governor Spencer Cox, Congressman John Curtis and Republican attorney general candidate Derek Brown did meet the qualifications to be on the GOP primary ballot.
The Office of the Legislative Auditor-General was asked to investigate the signatures for the candidates after Cox's primary election challenger, Phil Lyman, raised questions about whether everything was proper. Tuesday's audit found that while a random sample of signatures did identify some errors, "candidates fulfilled the requirements given to them."
The audit found some signatures were approved or rejected by mistake and some signatures raised enough concerns that it was handed over to the Utah Attorney General's Office.
"Some packets had no signatures rejected, other packets had a few, but a small number of packets had a disproportionate number of signatures rejected and were suspected of potential concerns with the signature gatherer. In these instances, the [Davis County Clerk's] Office removed the packet from the verification process and sent it to the LG’s Office. The LG’s Office then reviewed the packet and determined whether to send it to the Office of the Attorney General for further review. We reviewed concerning packets in the custody of the Office of the Attorney General as part of our audit process," the audit said.
It was not disclosed whose campaign those signatures involved.
“They didn’t find any signatures that didn’t exist. Everybody who they reviewed in these packets was an actual person,“ said Ryan Cowley with the Davis County Clerk’s Office. "There was an actual signature there. They did not find private voters who were made up or had invalid signatures. They didn’t find any fraudulent signatures that were accepted."
In a joint statement on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, signaled their satisfaction with the audit.
"The audit confirmed that Spencer Cox, John Curtis, and Derek Brown fulfilled the requirements to qualify to be on the ballot. Although the audit identified some errors in the signature verification process, these would not have affected the primary election's outcome. Each candidate submitted more signatures than required by law and would have had sufficient time to gather additional signatures if needed," the Republican leaders on Utah's Capitol Hill said.
"This audit was conducted solely to improve the signature process moving forward and has no bearing on the validity of candidates during this current election. We fully support these candidates and acknowledge their diligent efforts to fulfill the requirements to run for office. We appreciate the county clerks who carry out elections across our state and praise them for their dedication to and participation in the democratic process."
The legislative leaders said that bills have already been opened ahead of the 2025 Utah legislature to address issues that the audit did find, including additional training, more uniform standards and even greater controls over signature verification and transparency processes.
"Additionally, the LG’s Office should establish additional chain of custody practices for petition packets. While we witnessed certain chain of custody practices, additional controls would provide increased assurance of the security and integrity of candidate petition packets," the audit said.
In a formal response to the audit, Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson said she agreed with the findings.
"My office consistently strives to improve election processes and procedures and are consistent with our Election laws. We are never satisfied with the status quo. To that end, we appreciate the findings and recommendations of this audit—many of which we stand ready to implement," she wrote in a letter to Legislative Auditor-General Kade Minchey.
Under Utah law, candidates can either go through the caucus-convention system or gather signatures to earn a spot on a primary ballot (or both). Gov. Cox lost the Republican state party convention nomination to Lyman (the governor was even booed by people in the crowd), but went on to win the primary because he collected enough signatures to earn a spot on the ballot. Lyman is currently mounting a write-in campaign for governor.
The audit is similar to a review conducted by Utah State Auditor John Dougall, who found no significant issues with how candidates gather signatures to earn a spot on the primary ballot.
Read the full audit here:
