Lyman loses records request challenge, but lawsuit for Cox signatures is still pending

Gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman listens to proceedings during a court hearing in West Jordan in an effort to obtain Utah Gov. Spencer Cox's signatures, on Thursday, July 18, 2024. (Pool photo by Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune)

State Rep. Phil Lyman continued his effort to inspect election processes and question the legitimacy of incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox’s campaign on Thursday, in a busy day that included a State Records Committee meeting in the morning and a court hearing in the afternoon.

It was a packed house and with an at-times unruly crowd at the State Records Committee meeting Thursday morning. As Lyman, who lost the GOP gubernatorial primary in June, and his running mate Natalie Clawson heard a motion to deny their petition to see the election signatures, their supporters, many sporting his campaign’s maroon T-shirts and Trump campaign attire, booed the committee members.

The petition was only indirectly about Cox. Lyman and Clawson had joined a Government Records Access and Management Act appeal filed by resident Michael Clara, who unsuccessfully requested to review the list of signatures submitted in Sen. Don Ipson’s name to qualify for the general election ticket in Washington County. But the committee agreed with the county, attributing their denial to an ongoing investigation that could be tainted by the records release.

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Though the case was about Ipson’s records, Lyman and Clawson said it was about election transparency and verifying the legitimacy of candidates, such as Cox, who won the primary election for the Republican gubernatorial nomination with 54.4% of the vote .

“I do not believe Spencer Cox got 28,000 valid signatures,” Lyman told his followers after the vote in a speech filled with his questions about the election system in Utah. “That posture is not without basis, the company that gathered for him also gathered for Don Ipson. They said that Don was good to go. Washington County said ‘not so fast;’ and ended up rejecting more than a quarter of his signatures.”

After gubernatorial primary loss, Lyman sues for records that allowed Cox to get on ballot

It’s never a surprise when his election challenges yield unfavorable results, Lyman added, like when his requests for voter rolls were denied or when his proposals as a House Representative to eliminate by-mail voting failed. He argued there’s an “establishment,” with connections to lobbyists that have “an inside track to House and Senate leadership” that sits on boards of prominent Utah organizations and signed contracts with the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC , the system used by state elections agencies to maintain election integrity.

Though there is no evidence that there has been fraud in the election process, Republicans in many states, including Utah, have called to withdraw from ERIC driven by these claims . Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson called ERIC “ a favorite boogeyman of the radical election deniers,” and argued that “their claims are not based in fact, and their demands are counterproductive to their rhetoric.”

Lyman, however, asked to be proven wrong with “solid audit processes.”

“Do it, and if you won’t do it, then at least disagree better with those who are convinced that Utah elections are corrupted not by the courts, but by the vendors who provide the machines and the software and by the lieutenant governor who enters into illegal contracts,” Lyman said.

The GRAMA decision

The committee agreed with the argument presented by Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke, who said the records were restricted because there’s an active investigation on the signatures the county had received from Ipson.

“I believe the integrity of the investigation, and finding out if there was wrongdoing, and holding people accountable if there is wrongdoing, outweighs the interest of the petitioner,” said Ed Biehler, a committee member, when making the motion, prompting sounds of disbelief from Lyman supporters. Some loudly walked out of the room.

“Remove the names that are under investigation and release the rest,” someone yelled from the public before the vote.

“This has the aroma of mendacity,” someone else added.

This was a common theme during the meeting. Throughout the discussion, many cheered when Clawson spoke, or booed and yelled questions after comments from the Washington County attorney. State troopers approached the committee members after the vote, standing between them and the members of the public who continued to yell from a distance.

Later that afternoon, Lyman told reporters he thought the reaction from his supporters was warranted.

“I saw people having some frustration, I would not call that heated,” he said. “I don’t believe that was a heated hearing at all.”

“The people of Utah are paying attention,” Lyman said.

Ipson, Cox, U.S. Senate candidate Brad Wilson and attorney general candidate Derek Brown’s campaigns used the company Gathering Inc. to complete the signature gathering. When election clerks raised red flags on Ipson’s petitions, it drew the eyes of the Lyman campaign to the other candidates who used the services of Gathering Inc.

Utah Code establishes that, upon request, clerks should either provide a list of names of individuals who signed the petition, or allow requesters to view, but not take copies or images of the list, with the exception of signatures classified as private.

“The public is losing faith in our election system due to the lack of transparency,” Clawson told the committee on behalf of the Lyman-Clawson campaign. “If a candidate gets access to the primary ballot by putting in signatures, the public is to be provided a list of names and addresses upon the request and permitted to keep the actual signatures.”

Clawson argued that the public’s interest in transparency outweighed Washington County’s reason to keep the information private. She added that as a candidate, she was entitled to all voting data, including classified and private information but excluding driver’s license information, Social Security numbers and email addresses.

Judge taking Lyman’s request under advisement

A few hours after the records committee meeting, Lyman appeared at the 3rd District Court in West Jordan, where his attorneys argued their case for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order forcing election officials to hand over unredacted signature packets that the Cox campaign submitted to get on the primary ballot.

Earlier this month, the Lyman campaign sued Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, Ryan Cowley, the elections director who works under Henderson, and Mallory Underwood, office administrator for the lieutenant governor.

The lawsuit is an attempt to get hold of the signature packets submitted by the Cox campaign, which includes the signature, name, address and other information of each of the thousands of registered Republicans who signed on to help the current governor get on the ballot. The lawsuit also asks the court for the signature packets from Brad Wilson and Derek Brown’s campaign — Wilson lost his bid for U.S. Senate, while Brown won the GOP primary for attorney general.

For about over an hour, 3rd District Judge Stephen Nelson heard Lyman’s attorney argue why the request is rooted in “public trust and transparency” — and a rebuttal from the attorney representing Utah, who claimed the lawsuit risked violating voter privacy without providing “evidence of irregularity in the signature gathering process.”

Utah law allows candidates two avenues to get on the ballot — they can seek nomination by GOP delegates at the Utah Republican Party’s convention, or they can collect enough signatures from eligible primary voters. The argument from Douglas Farr, Lyman’s attorney, hinged on the fact that Cox used Gathering Inc. to collect signatures.

“The company that gathered signatures for a campaign in Washington County that’s under investigation is the same company that gathered signatures statewide for the Cox/Henderson campaign,” said Farr, suggesting that as they were going door-to-door, the contractors for Gathering Inc. may have overlapped collecting signatures for both Ipson and Cox.

The public, Farr said, has “an interest in ensuring the signature gathering process utilized by the Cox/Henderson campaign … was done fairly.” If they are able to obtain the packets, Farr said they will then inspect them to ensure there were no irregularities.

Farr, in response to a question from the judge, said he was being “intentionally vague” because he didn’t want to “speculate” on what could happen if they do get the packets but said there’s “potential” they could try to get Lyman back on the ballot for the general election.

Lance Sorenson, the attorney representing Utah, said Lyman’s legal challenge was an attempt to call the integrity of the electoral process into question without providing evidence of misconduct.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever of any irregularity in the signature gathering for the three candidates,” Sorenson said, adding that there is no “evidence that the candidates should not be on the ballot.”

If there was evidence, Sorenson said the Lyman campaign should have filed their records request months ago — the Cox campaign was prepared to continue gathering signatures if courts or elections officials identified any issues, he said.

“They should’ve brought their concerns up well before the primary ballot was certified,” Sorenson said.

Sorenson also argued against releasing the packets over privacy concerns — some of the voters who signed on to get Cox on the ballot chose to keep their information private and it should stay that way, he told the judge.

“When voters elect to keep their information private, they are expecting it to be private,” Sorenson said. “They may want anonymity for various reasons. That’s a public interest.”

Ultimately, Nelson took the matter under advisement. He said he’ll issue an order in the coming days.

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