Utah election officials meet with U.S. Reps. Moore, Davis, tout voting process here
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- Ryan Cowley, left, of the Weber County Elections Office, shows U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis around the county elections office on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Davis, from Illinois, and U.S. Rep. Blake Moore, Utah’s 1st District representative, discussed Utah’s election process at a meeting in Ogden with election officials from around the state.
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- U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois, left, and U.S. Rep. Blake Moore, to his right, at a meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021, with election officials from around the state. They discussed Utah’s election process during the gathering at the Weber Center in Ogden.
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- U.S. Rep. Blake Moore, right, talks with U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, who’s from Illinois, at the Weber Center in Ogden on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Davis and Moore discussed Utah’s election process at a meeting in Ogden with election officials from around the state.
OGDEN — Despite talk among some about fraud in last November’s elections, U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, sees plenty of good in what local election officials have done across the country to safeguard the process.
The checks and balances they put in place to help assure clean elections don’t get enough attention, the Illinois Republican said during a visit to Ogden, and it’s his aim to put them in the spotlight.
He wants “to be able to tell the stories of our local election administrators throughout this nation to show the American people what’s going right in our system and this great country that we live in,” Davis said during a stop Wednesday at the Weber Center, the seat of Weber County government. He came with U.S. Rep. Blake Moore, the 1st District representative, and met with election officials from Weber County and other counties across Utah who came here to meet with the U.S. lawmakers.
“There are a lot of really good practices (in Utah). That’s why Rep. Davis is here, to learn some of these best practices and share them across to other states, identify what role the federal government can play,” Moore said.
Moore has gotten a crash course in Utah’s unique mail-in election system from Weber County Clerk-Auditor Ricky Hatch, who took part in Wednesday’s meeting, and he regularly touts the system amid calls that last November’s elections were fraudulent. The U.S. lawmaker reiterated that on Wednesday, saying he always advises critics to educate themselves on how the process works.
Davis, who’s been traveling around the country to see how different states handle elections as part of his Faith in Elections Project, thinks election practices and polices should come from the local and state level, not the feds. In that vein, both he and Moore blasted a election reform measure put forward by Democrats, House Resolution 1,
H.R. 1 and another proposal, H.R. 4, “would fundamentally take autonomy out from under these local election officials, and that is not what I believe to be constitutional,” Moore said. The “good work” of local election officials like those in Utah “can be perpetuated.”
Davis has visited election officials in New York, Tennessee, Alaska and other states to hear firsthand how they handle elections. “Our goal is to put together their voices in a final paper that will talk about what’s going right in America when it comes to elections and hopefully give our constituents all across the county the ability to have faith in our election systems,” Davis said.
Since the move to mail-in balloting in Weber County, the vast majority of voters have shifted to casting ballots via mail or at drop boxes instead of at polling places on Election Day.
“Utah is the model,” Moore said.
Time is one of the keys in successfully implementing a mail-in system like Utah’s, said Ryan Cowley, who heads the Weber County Elections Office and took part in Wednesday’s meeting. “I really think it’s about a two-year cycle to make that work,” he said.