Utah House Speaker takes aim at mail-in voting after audit finds two instances of dead voters.
Hits & Misses
By Katharine Biele @kathybiele
Miss: The Voting Dead
Utah can't even win when it's winning. Take our election system, for example. There was righteous indignation over a recent legislative audit that suggested dead people had been voting. Well, it didn't actually say that. It said two—count them, two!—dead people voted. Of course, dead people can't vote, but the audit did find that voter rolls contained 1,400 deceased voters, of which two mailed ballots apparently were cast. Maybe it was a mistake or maybe deliberate, but do the math. Of the 1,400 deceased, 700 were marked as active voters and sent ballots. Two ballots were returned—two out of the more than 2 million total Utah voters. This really worried House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, who now says mailed ballots can't be trusted. UVU's Herbert Institute takes exception. They determined that, "Utah's election laws and procedures (make it) exceedingly unlikely that any appreciable level of election fraud could go undetected."
Miss: Crude Oil
If Donald Trump's pledge to "Drill, Baby, Drill" becomes a reality, all that oil presumably will need to be transported somewhere. So it makes sense that the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing in on how to make it easier. It is hearing a case over the Uintah Basin Railway, which on the surface is about 88 miles of freight rail lines. In fact, the lawsuit is about bureaucratic overreach and whether an agency can consider effects beyond the 88-mile line itself. "The fossil fuel industry and its allies are making radical arguments that would blind the public to obvious health consequences of government decisions," said Sam Sankar of Earthjustice. It's hard to know how the court will rule, since the justices appeared critical of both sides, a Trust Project story said. For sure, environmental health is on the line.
Hit: Safe at School
While Gov. Spencer Cox commits to help the Trumpian mass deportation effort, the Salt Lake City School Board has reaffirmed that it will support and protect all students, regardless of their immigration status. It's not a new commitment. When Trump last took office, the school board passed its Safe Schools Resolution. That means student privacy is sacrosanct and that federal intervention in a school would be disruptive, to say the least. Trump apparently intends to rescind a policy that prevents federal officers from entering schools, KUER reported on Dec. 11. That is one reason that families—especially in Salt Lake County's west side communities—are fearful of what's coming. And despite a 1982 high court ruling that students can't be denied admission to public schools based on immigration status, there are examples of schools misleading students. For now, Cox might want to channel his good-guy image and honor the school district's resolution.
About The Author
Katharine Biele
A City Weekly contributor since 1992, Katharine Biele is the informed voice behind our Hits & Misses column. When not writing, you can catch her working to empower voters and defend democracy alongside the League of Women Voters.
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