In politics, you’re either on-message or you’re losing. Let’s get to it.
Welcome to On Message, a weekly look at where the battle lines are drawn and who is winning the war of words.
This week… Check the Numbers.
Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump began a blatant attempt to undermine confidence in the election and led an effort to overturn the results, leading to the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Where calls for recounts or election audits were granted, namely Maricopa County, Arizona, things didn’t work out so well for Trump and his supporters as his margin of defeat actually increased by 261 votes.
And, while some states were rushed into changes to their voting procedures in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Utah had relatively smooth sailing as vote by mail has been the norm here for several cycles.
Still, some kept the drum beat alive as best they could… though the effort will mostly be remembered for having driven former Representative Steve Christiansen to resign from the House.
All that brings us to an interesting messaging dynamic. One side says the election was flawed and the other says it was just fine. The fact is, there are numerous safeguards in place to prevent voter or election fraud.
So, policymakers are left with a bit of a predicament: how do we do the work necessary to ensure our elections are secure going forward and how do we enhance those security measures to ensure voters can be confident the will of the people aligns with the final vote tabulations?
On Wednesday, new House Majority Leader Mike Schultz issued a press release calling for an audit of election process, saying, “Audits are a routine process in both government and private entities that provide insight, direction, and security.” And saying the audit is intended to, “to assess the integrity and accuracy of voter rolls, the legitimacy and security of submitted ballots, and the systems and processes within election offices.”
In other words, this isn’t a recount of the 2020 election, rather it’s an effort to review our process and look for ways to make it better.
Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, the state’s top election official, says she’s confident in the integrity of our elections and says she has been looking for ways to further enhance Utah’s election security already.
That’s great.
And it’s also a great example of two government entities working to triangulate on the issue.
On the far right, there are people sewing doubts about election integrity. On the left, there are people casting aspersion on the sanity of the far right and in the middle are most people who believe our elections are secure but think it can’t hurt to continue to innovate and address any weaknesses in our current system.
The Lt. Governor and the House Majority Leader are both on the right message point here. The right (or far right) can see that we’re looking to make elections secure; the left can see we’re not trying to rehash the 2020 election and the important work of ensuring a secure election system we can all trust can get done.
I think it’s a winning message for the broad audience it needs to impact.
That’s it for this week.
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As always, you can find more On Message videos, in-depth Utah political stories and analysis, plus podcasts and more at utahpoliticalundergound.com.
