In the race for Salt Lake County Clerk — the position in charge of elections — political party isn’t the only division between candidates. One has said Democrats “cheat” and the 2020 election was stolen, despite zero evidence to support the claims.
In public, Maragani, a compliance lawyer for technology company Lucid, is straightforward about the 2020 election — “Joe Biden won the election. I think that’s clear. I think Trump filed a bunch of cases, but he came up short. He didn’t win it.”GOP candidate thinks that Democrats “cheat” and the 2020 election was stolen
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the state’s top election official, has said that there is no evidence of election fraud in Utah’s 2020 elections, including with mail-in ballots., “Our mail-in ballots, I think, are actually probably one of the most secure ways that we could be administering an election.” Republican candidate for Salt Lake County clerk Goud Maragani is interviewed in Salt Lake City Monday, Sept. 12, 2022.
The state classifies voter records in three ways: When Utahns register to vote or update their information, they can choose to make their information public, which can be accessed by anyone, or to keep their information private — although political parties and candidates can get access for campaign purposes. Records marked as “withheld” cannot be made public.
“Anybody who oversees elections in Utah knows we have a two-week canvass period. During those two weeks, we’re not just eating bonbons and sitting on our hands. We’re processing ballots. We had over 100,000 ballots drop on Election Day 2020,” Chapman said. “There is no discrepancy. The data we sent is captured from our current voter list. Therefore anyone who has since died, moved or otherwise been inactivated since November would be excluded from these results, as this list only includes our current active registered voters,” Michelle Blue, director of the Salt Lake County Clerk’s office, replied on Aug 2, 2021. Salt Lake County chief deputy clerk Lannie Chapman prepares primary election ballots for counting in 2020.
Other policies Maragani has championed, like publishing images of cast ballots online, would break state law, according to elections officials. “I have been voting by mail since 2012 when my oldest daughter was one year old. I knew I couldn’t make it to the polls to make sure I had my voice heard in my community. It’s convenient and allows me time to look up the candidates and answer my questions,” Chapman said.
In May, he was part of a panel discussion before a screening of Dinesh D’Souza’s movie “2000 Mules,” which claims without evidence that nonprofits paid volunteers to traffic ballots to drop boxes in states won by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
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