This is a submission to Caucus Corner. These are notes from a debate/conversations of the delegates for Utah County Commission last week. Contact your representative to let him/her know who you prefer. Do further research besides these notes.

Any misinformation IS the fault of the note taker. Some of the thoughts are incomplete due to my not typing things verbatim. My bad.

 

Greg Graves:

• is a lifelong resident,
• Served as commissioner
• Why is he running, he loves this county. Inspired by civility. Patriotism.
• He is here to talk about issues.
• When you run for public office, you are a public servant.

 

Josh Daniels:

• Worked for aft early years.
• Last 2 years chief deputy auditor.
• We revolutionized an office that had fallen out of date. We had many challenges in 2018 election.
• We were going to use dominion as the voting software. To get out of dominion we found clauses in the contract to legally exit.
• He studied political science in college.
• Learned leadership in the marine core.
• If you want to get productivity out of a team, you need to lead them.
• After Iraq, he went to law school in Houston and worked for a TX congressman. He worked on regional polities. (TX)
• He worked in school choice.
• Great service at low cost

 

Wendy Heart:

• Being informed is my theme song.
• She is a mom of three and started in technology. She worked as a manager and a project manager. She switched over to database analysis as her own company.
• She is against common core.
• We should have control at local level.\clerk elections and audit is budget.
• Has experience and a track record to bring more transparency. She did it at alpine school board. AT school opened up.
• Voted to verify .
• Bring more transparency.
• School says culture has change and not as op0en.
• Seeing a lot of cutting edge but trust has dropped. How make elections secure.
• Want convenience and integrity. Can bring her technical background skills to the job.
• I am a legal hacker.
• Giving the people the info for them to gain confidence.
• Put everything out for you.
• For audit put in more layman’s terms.
• Give as much info that is available.

 

Q&A area

Josh:

• In election, there has been a lot of work done since 2020. State government has always had a higher bar.
• Utah has led the action through state law processes. There is sampling pulled and given to the department.
• Our ballot center is visible online to the public. You can observe the ballot system.
• The ACLU and disability organizations have given us high marks.
• Real time data sharing how many voters, how many ballots returned, how many processed. Public would know about numbers and data.
• We are working with vendors for additional transparency. Logs and images might be available
• We ask a lot of questions as a team. We ask where the weak points are. See if the weak points are exploited.

Greg:

• at a meeting (convention?) Cox’s people wanted the state to have vote by mail, so the vote would go to Cox.
• Stood by lee, we got sued and apposed a fine to use tax dollars to manipulate the vote to a more (spropsotions?) one.

 

Q: What are your feelings about many manipulation voting will be done by rank choice? What are your thoughts on ranked choice? Support vote by mail.

Host:

• rank choice: we have been doing well on ranked choice. We use it in the party elections and now cities use it as well.
• Vote by mail: started in 2008 by Salt Lake starting. 12 yrs. every count must register by mail. Make sure out date voting data is fixed. Look at change of address out of date. Twenty % of voter registration cards are returned.

Greg:

• like vote by mail. Need voter rolls up to be up to date. The needs to be more education on voting. He is not anti-ranking, but we need to educate people on how ranking works. Commission voting for commissioner. Ballots were thrown out, of voters who only voted for one candidate.

Wendy:

• mail in required by state. Don’t think it fair for legislators to change from May. People should have choice on how to vote. Bad to prohibit a person’s voting. Voter rolls are very important. Many counties are taking efforts to keep rolls up to date.
• Rank choice: 25% in vineyard and Payson (?) only got the first choice counted. Other people could vote. There were problems with multiple candidates.

 

Q: who should be in charge of monitoring the budget?

Greg:

• clerk auditors not the commissioner; and the auditor works with dept. heads. State codes every official. He is responsible for his budget.
• If recorder says, we need three new staff then it is discussed. That dept. need to justify why.

Wendy:

• state code required for budget. The clerk works under county to audit the budget.
• Could facilate all the heads of dept. to work together. It would be a smooth transition. Working with people who disagree.
• The county auditor is not an internal auditor only budget chief finance officer.
• The county auditor prepare the tentative budget.
• The commission makes changes and finalizes it.
• Those who run elections should be voted in a nonpartisan way.
• there is more support when people run under a certain party. Sharing info is easier. Having a party platform does not necessarily being objectivity.

Justin:

• We invited candidates of the fourth district to meet with the voting committee. The committee told them how voting works. this to help them to avoid contesting the election.
• Partisan elections have more scrutiny.

Greg:

• feels it should be partisan. It is up to the party who represent their values.

 

Q: since 2008: budge had increased 89%. Was it justified?

Justin:

• have core staff for presidential election. Municipal election is billed to the city.
• In case of audit staff: Utah count staffing for finical reps it was 50% below other counties. Office was not doing 30% of their duties.
• County were upset about the turnaround times.
• Did add some money to fill some positons. Still below other counties. We lost two million to fraud.

Greg: clerk

• it’s on line. Some is equipment. Some money for mailing some is printing. Have issues with auditing.
• Expert efficiently in government.

Wendy:

• why is position important? Wish cold have done more in the school district.
• Coming in from the outside can be advantageous. Need to define priorities. Make sure you are vetting why a new position is necessary.

 

Q: do you view audits as an advance.

Greg:

No, they are not an advocate. Auditors decides how and what?

 

Justin:

• In office, we had to construct our team. Book good to great by Jim Collins, talks about how to be more affective. Get the right people and make sur they are on the right sets. Who is in chart on white board> the people not families. You advocate their right to vote. Have voting secure.

Wendy:

• Have a separation of powers. Allows for greater freedom, have checks and balances. Even if people are well intentioned, it can help combat human vulnerability. As cities run elections, they can do what their voters/ cities want. If they make a decision then the people just change/ correct the mistake.
• For country elections > what is allowed by law but not advocate one method over another.

 

Update: Sept 9, 21

I went to a meeting tonight titled: Election Fraud in Utah County? .
I asked Josh Daniels about my notes from Greg weaves. He said it was actually Herbert who wanted to ensure mail in voting not Cox. I don’t know if I recorded the commissioner debate so I wanted to just state here was I was told tonight.