Sen. Romney lauds Utah voting process, defends Wyoming’s Rep. Cheney
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- U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, left, and Weber County Clerk/Auditor Ricky Hatch speak in the Weber County Elections Office on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. Romney toured the office and discussed how votes are processed in Weber County with local officials.
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- U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, left, Weber County Election Office worker Stacy Cornell, center, and Ryan Cowley, director of elections in the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office, listen during a tour of the county elections office on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. Romney toured the office and discussed how votes are processed in Weber County with local officials.
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- U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney gestures while speaking during a tour of the Weber County Elections Office on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022.
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- U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, right, and Ryan Cowley, director of elections in the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office, share a laugh in the Weber County Elections Office on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. Romney toured the office and discussed how votes are processed in Weber County with local officials.
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- U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, left, and Weber County Clerk/Auditor Ricky Hatch talk in the Weber County Elections Office on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. Romney toured the office and discussed how votes are processed in Weber County with local officials.
OGDEN — U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, who’s helped lead the committee looking into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and President Donald Trump’s role in it, may not get a lot of love from voters in Wyoming, her home state.
But U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney offered up some praiseworthy words, two days after Wyoming voters overwhelmingly rejected her reelection bid in the GOP primary in the neighboring state.
“I am in awe of her courage and her willingness to do what she thinks is right. It wouldn’t be called courage if there were no consequences to doing it,” he said Thursday during a visit to the Weber County Elections Office. “She took actions which she knew would have real consequences, and that’s what makes it courage.”
Romney, a Republican like Cheney and Trump, visited Ogden to get a first-hand look at the election security protocols in the Weber County Elections Office, guided by Weber County Clerk/Auditor Ricky Hatch, who oversees the office. In the context of clamoring by some that the voting process is susceptible to fraud in the wake of the 2020 presidential vote — which Trump falsely claims he won and a big focus of the Jan. 6 committee — the Utah senator offered a strong counterpoint.
Many across the country may have questions about election security, said Romney, who drafted legislation with a bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators — still pending — to reform the U.S. electoral process. But in Utah, he went on, “particularly here in Weber County, I come away with certainty that the system we have in place here is accurate, fair and is unable to be attacked and corrupted.”
Hatch, who has opened the Weber County Elections Office to all interested in learning more about the voting process, explained to Romney the varied measures in mailing, processing and counting ballots aimed at preventing fraud. Ryan Cowley, director of elections in the office of Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, was also on hand along with several other local leaders.
Though Romney’s comments on Cheney stemmed from a query on whether he’d support her for president in 2024 if she runs — he’s not committed to any would-be aspirant — they’re also noteworthy amid the simmering debate over election security. In her role on the Jan. 6 committee, Cheney has blasted “the big lie” — contentions by Trump and some of his backers that he won the 2020 presidential vote — and the committee has poked holes in the claims. Her involvement in the issue has prompted criticism from many GOPers and led to Cheney’s loss in voting in Wyoming on Tuesday.
Asked about some Americans’ doubts about the election process, Romney noted his own loss to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential contest. “I didn’t think for a moment that I had somehow been robbed of my election. In fact, I recognized I lost and accepted that like a man,” he said.
He also noted Trump’s apparent difficulty in accepting the 2020 electoral loss, the key factor in the continuing debate over election security.
“I think President Trump has a hard time accepting the idea that he might have lost. He attaches great significance to the term ‘loser.’ I think we all do to a certain degree, but he perhaps more than the average American,” Romney said. “Doesn’t want to accept that he legitimately lost. He did. Move on.”
Among the many measures meant to safeguard the election process in Weber County are coding on envelopes holding mail-in ballots that corresponds to individual voters and software that helps verify the validity of voters’ signatures on their ballots. Moreover, the machinery that processes ballots isn’t connected to the internet to guard against hackers, and when collecting ballots at drop boxes, two election workers, each with their own dropbox key, handle the effort, among other measures.
“The county clerks are doing a great job,” said Cowley, who used to head the Weber County Elections Office. “I really feel confident. We have good people doing a good job.”
Even so, both he and Hatch said they have heard from Utahns who worry the process is open to fraud. Some have even aggressively pursued public records requests to get access to voting records, here in Weber County and across Utah.
“We’re definitely hearing those things,” Cowley said. “Everything we’ve looked into, we’ve looked at, we haven’t found evidence of fraud in the state of Utah.”
Hatch said the clamoring he’s heard started after the 2020 presidential vote and it’s led some election workers in Utah and across the nation to get out of the field. The most common complaints he hears are that the vote processing equipment is “compromised,” a contention he rebuffed.
In fact, his aim in overseeing the voting process is to instill confidence among the public. “We want voters to have confidence,” Hatch said. “We’re saying don’t trust us, come see the process.”
The proposed electoral reform legislation introduced last month by Romney and several other U.S. senators aims to modernize the Electoral Count Act of 1887, among other things. Among its many provisions, it affirms that the vice president’s role in tallying electoral votes “is solely ministerial,” an apparent response to pressure Trump and his supporters put on Vice President Mike Pence during the vote-counting process after the 2020 presidential vote.
The legislation also clarifies other elements of the 1887 law, earmarks funding to help local election officials get secure voting equipment and stiffens the penalties against those who threaten election workers. “That, I think, is important,” Romney said.
He thinks the legislation could make it to the Senate floor for a vote this fall. “But I think it’s important to have this in place, certainly before the 2024 election,” Romney said.
The bills are called the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act and the Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act.