Audit finds 1,400 apparently deceased voters on rolls in Utah, recommends changes

SALT LAKE CITY — Legislative auditors recommended that the Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office do a better job of cleaning up Utah's voter rolls after finding that two apparently deceased individuals cast ballots in the November 2023 election.

As part of its biennial examination of the state's election system, auditors with the Office of the Legislative Auditor General compared death records with Utah's voter rolls, and identified more than 1,400 voters "who likely should have been removed but were not." Nearly 700 of those voters were marked as active voters — meaning they were sent a mail-in ballot by county clerks — and two of those voters cast ballots last year.

"Although the number of potential matches of deceased voters is small compared to Utah's over 2 million registered voters, it still represents a significant lapse in fulfilling an explicit voter list maintenance requirement," auditors wrote in a report that was presented to the Legislative Audit Subcommittee on Monday afternoon. "It is especially concerning in light of our office's previous recommendation that the LG's office 'monitor and ensure that the names of deceased voters are removed from the voter rolls.'"

Auditors recommended that the state elections office "compare the records of deceased individuals from the Office of Vital Records and Statistics to the state's official voter list — at least 90 days prior to each primary and general election — to ensure deceased voters have been removed from the voter list."

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson's office agreed with the recommendation, saying it "has made a concerted effort to comply with the requirements outlined in statute," and that it believes it has "complied with this recommendation." The office's response noted several "potential failure points" that exist in the process through which death data is uploaded for county clerks to review, and the office asked that the Division of Vital Records provide a complete list of deceased individuals to the office at least 120 days before each election.

Henderson's office said it was made aware of the 1,400 potential deceased voters in September of this year and "took immediate action to ensure they were reviewed by the county clerks before the (November 2024) general election."

Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, used the audit to suggest that Utah's universal mail-in voting system should be revisited. Lawmakers have already floated several suggestions related to election administration, and a bill that would require voters to opt in to receive a mail ballot is likely to be reintroduced this year.

Schultz said the audit shows "it's clearly not the case" that mail-in voting is as secure as in-person voting.

"If you're showing ID, and you're in person, it's kind of hard — unless you have fake ID — to vote if you're dead," he said.

But House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said many of her constituents appreciate the convenience of the vote-by-mail system.

"I would hate to see this be used against vote-by-mail because vote-by-mail is very important here in the state," she said. "I don't want this to hurt what we have in place and what we have going well — which was actually ran by Republican legislators here in our state."

The report also said auditors had found at least 300 individuals who potentially had been given two voter identification numbers and nearly 450 records in which a driver's license number "was shared between two voters who were seemingly different people." Auditors "found few instances ... of individuals voting multiple times in a single election" over the past two years, but did not specify how many.

To remedy those issues, auditors recommended that the lieutenant governor's office "better use its data analyst position to do regular, proactive analysis of Utah's voter list to find and correct any problems and improve election integrity."

"While this legislative audit has uncovered some gaps that will help us improve, we respectfully disagree with the claim that we have not properly utilized staff to regularly and proactively monitor and ensure voter list maintenance," state elections director Ryan Cowley wrote in response.

He went on to list several efforts the office has made to improve the state's voter rolls, including quarterly registration audits for every county, monthly voter list maintenance certifications posted to the office's website, regularly checking queues for deceased and duplicated voters, and giving monthly change of address form lists from the U.S. Postal Service to clerks.

Cowley said the quarterly audits, which look for duplicate registrations and deceased voters, and verify voter eligibility, addresses and identification, among other things, have resulted in a decline in findings, which he called "a strong indicator that the voter list is getting better with each passing audit and training provided by our office."

He said the office "will enhance its review processes and make appropriate changes to comply with this audit's interpretation of the law."

Utah law requires legislative auditors to carry out audits of the election system in Utah every two years, after lawmakers adopted several recommendations from a similar audit released in the fall of 2022. The most recent results could help shape how lawmakers address election administration during the upcoming legislative session.

Lawmakers are already considering making it a crime for election officials to access and disclose information about how voters cast their ballots after Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson said he tracked the method by which some politicians cast their votes. Other legislators have proposed creating an independent state office to oversee election administration and requiring voters to opt in to receive a mail-in ballot.

Other findings

While working on their report, auditors say they observed post-election audits in all 29 counties in the state across three separate elections. They found that nine county clerks "neglected to examine paper ballots and 13 did not review the individual (cast vote records) during their audits."

"Clerks who didn't examine paper ballots neglected to do so because their election equipment and software does not easily sort the ballots into batches," the report states. "This is an ongoing challenge and both clerks and the LG's office have worked to correct it, but we still have concerns."

The audit recommends all clerks "learn and execute all post-election audit process requirements and procedures" and that the lieutenant governor's office create administrative rules establishing criteria for those audits.

While overseeing election counting during the 2024 primary election in June, auditors noted that some counties had deficiencies in chain of custody procedures for ballots, and recommended that all clerks sort ballots into batches immediately after they are collected, provide sufficient camera monitoring of ballot counting, reconcile chain of custody for ballots and document the intake of ballots.

"In our observations, the deficiencies in chain of custody procedures during the 2024 June primary election highlight the need for stricter adherence to statutory requirements by county clerks," the report states.

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