Something smells fishy at the Count My Vote (SB54) supporting state elections office.
The day after the deadline to remove signatures from ballot initiatives, Utah county recorder “finds” over ninety Count (Buy) My Vote signature packets thought to contain over two thousand signatures from Utah county. The Buckshot member and Count My Vote supporting Lt. Governor Spencer Cox quickly ordered Utah County recorder Bryan Thompson to process the packets immediately.
Why is this “fishy”? For the past several weeks, supporters of the caucus system have been feverishly contacting signers of the petition to bring California style politics to Utah with 75% +/- of the contacted petition signers not knowing they had signed the petition since they did not support it and wanted their names taken off immediately. With this large number of signers saying that they did not sign the petition, are we seeing evidence of massive fraud? It is a fact that CMV signature gatherers were arrested for fraudulently adding names. Was this wider spread than we’ve been led to believe? This is the same county that “accidentally” sent Republican primary ballots to non Republicans in last years race to replace the sudden resigning of Jason Chaffetz.
The timing of this release is also interesting since the existence of the “missing” packets were known to organizers of KMV for at least two weeks. If they’ve been known about for over two weeks, why were they just released now when there is no way to go through and see if these two thousand signatures are as fraudulent as the rest? If our right to freely associate is to be taken away by way of mob rule in violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, shouldn’t our elected officials at least try to get rid of any appearance of impropriety?
Defending Utah calls on Bryan Thompson and Utah county leaders, in an effort to retain faith in the system, to reject the signatures found past the verification deadline. Defending Utah also calls on Spencer Cox to either start acting as an impartial party in the illegal initiative process or resign his position. To allow these signatures to be counted without the ability to continue the verification process that has led to huge numbers of signature removals damages the public trust in our elected officials and in turn the legitimacy of our government.
