Celeste Maloy wins recount in 2024 Utah primary

A recount in the Republican primary in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District, in which Rep. Celeste Maloy narrowly won, reduced her lead over challenger Colby Jenkins by 38 votes but left the overall tally unchanged.

After the election was certified late last month, results showed Maloy beating Jenkins by 214 votes, but because the margin between them was 0.25 percentage points, Jenkins was entitled to request a recount, including a review of any votes that were disqualified.

After a recount ended Monday, Maloy’s lead was reduced to 176 votes out of more than 107,000 votes cast in the precinct.

In the midst of the recount, state election officials said they found a problem in software used by Tooele and Washington counties to manually enter ballot results that had to be reviewed — or checked — by election judges to determine how a voter intended to vote.

Officials in Tooele and Washington counties developed a workaround, but the bug prompted state officials to suspend use of Election Systems & Software’s Electionware program and order counties using the software to recheck results to make sure they were accurate.

A software issue caused 55 votes in Tooele County and 36 in Washington County that were initially uncounted to be added to the vote total, giving Jenkins 35 more votes — which explains almost the entire discrepancy between the vote count certified last month and the vote count after the recount.

“After reviewing the election database, it was confirmed that valid votes were counted and recorded correctly; however, they were not successfully recorded in the reporting module,” the company said in a statement. “The issue was resolved by identifying valid votes that were not recorded correctly, clearing those votes, and reloading them in smaller batches, resulting in accurate and reliable results.”

Election Systems & Software said it is working with state and county officials to conduct an audit of databases that were involved in the recount.

“County officials and their staff did an incredible job counting and recounting the votes,” Maloy said in a statement Monday. “Their process was thorough, transparent, and their extraordinary accuracy should inspire confidence in our election system.”

Jenkins also said he was “grateful for the tireless efforts of the officials and their staff to conduct the recount.”

“We have made progress piece by piece at every stage of this process, and the votes we won in this recount are another example of that,” he said.

Jenkins filed a lawsuit in the Utah Supreme Court challenging the election results, arguing that nearly 1,200 ballots cast in southwestern Utah should be counted. The ballots were stamped after the deadline because, Jenkins claims, they had to be transported to Las Vegas to be stamped. Delays allegedly led to them being stamped after the deadline.

“A race that was too close to call is now even closer,” he said after Monday’s recount. “We look forward to the Utah Supreme Court’s decision to ensure that every legal vote is counted and every voice is heard.”

Maloy said she also “wants to get a court decision.”

Last month, a federal judge rejected Jenkins’ argument that failing to count late-posted ballots violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Voters, the judge said, must be responsible for sending in their ballots on time.

A state judge also denied Jenkins’ request that his campaign turn over lists of Washington County ballots that were rejected because of signature mismatches. The campaign wanted to contact those voters while they still had time to “fix” the errors. The judge said the county clerk had the discretion to decide whether to release the lists.

Gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman also challenged the election results, asking the Utah Supreme Court to overturn the primary results, throw out Gov. Spencer Cox and Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson and declare Lyman — who defeated Cox at the state GOP convention — the Republican candidate.