After years of close scrutiny and multiple audits, a new legislative audit says the office of Utah’s chief election official has been “diligent in improving” the state’s election system — but some county clerks “did not fully implement all changes” to their elections.

The audit follows a separate development reported just days ago: the DOJ disclosed it has been investigating Utah's chief election officer, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, since 2025.

Legislative auditors, according to the report released Tuesday, did an in-depth review of three counties: Utah, Wasatch and San Juan. Clerks overseeing those counties’ elections, auditors wrote, “can improve their efforts to follow and implement changes to election requirements.”

“In some cases, county clerks committed similar compliance errors we identified in previous audits,” auditors wrote. “The repeated nature of these errors is concerning, as it shows that clerks misunderstood corrective actions or did not fully address them.”

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A report from about a year ago found that turnover among election officials has reached record highs nationwide, a trend that can contribute to the kind of implementation gaps auditors identified here.

Auditors continue to note, as they have in past audits, that they’ve found no “significant fraud” in Utah’s elections. However, some “repeated deficiencies,” auditors concluded, “show the need for greater oversight of election compliance.”

“When clerks fall short of their election duties, the (lieutenant governor’s office) has statutory authority to enforce compliance,” auditors said, also noting that Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson’s office has prioritized assisting and supporting clerks rather than jumping to enforcing compliance.

That “limited approach to oversight, sometimes deferring to county elected officials’ implementation decisions rather than actively monitoring and correcting noncompliance,” may have contributed to errors auditors said they observed over multiple previous election audits.

The audit released Tuesday comes after legislative auditors followed up on how the lieutenant governor’s office and county clerks have implemented recommendations from an audit in 2024.

“As we said in 2024, ‘While we did not find significant fraud in Utah’s election system, the recommendations and findings in this report are needed to ensure continued election integrity,’” auditors wrote. “Utah’s election controls mitigate the risk of fraud as long as election officials use them properly. Given the errors we continue to see, we believe there is a need for improved oversight of compliance with election requirements.”

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Auditors credited Henderson’s office with following their recommendations to improve the state’s election system stemming from two reports, in 2022 and 2024, and for taking steps.

“Even so, we observed county clerks repeating errors identified in previous audits and struggling to implement new election requirements,” auditors wrote.

Henderson, in a written response to the audit, said it “strikes at the heart of the balance between state oversight of elections and the actions of independently elected county officials.”

She detailed her office’s efforts to visit each of the three counties, give training and provide other resources in order to help them correct their mistakes.

But she also noted that “numerous legislative changes” to the state’s election system by the Utah Legislature each year “makes successful implementation of new election laws a challenge.” She also noted last year’s major election law, HB300, passed even though lawmakers didn’t fund a full-time employee to help implement its changes.

“We would welcome the chance to fully implement new laws and have time to assess their effectiveness before substantial new changes are made,” Henderson wrote. “This would reduce both voter confusion and human error, and save taxpayer dollars.”

Issues in Utah County

In Utah County, the state’s second-most populous county, auditors said the office that has most recently been headed by Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson “generally conducts its elections well,” but they saw some instances where “the county clerk and staff did not fully comply with some election requirements.”

That included not fully complying with requirements for reviewing candidate nomination signature packets, some volunteers not taking state-required training before conducting the county’s post-election audit, poll workers inconsistently accepting or rejecting different types of documents for proof of residency in ways that may have impacted some provisional voters’ ability to register and cast a ballot, and not reconciling or documenting reconciliation discrepancies within the timeframe required under law.

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Auditors wrote that some candidate signature packets submitted to Utah County lacked required information, including contact information for those who gathered signatures. Instead of rejecting the packets, in an effort to address the missing information, the Utah County clerk’s office in some cases gathered “missing information from indirect sources instead of from the candidates,” and still accepted those packets.

Additionally, Davidson and his elections director “did not create policies or procedures to avoid a conflict of interest when processing candidate nomination petitions,” auditors wrote, even though Davidson was on the ballot for the 2026 primary election. Administrative rules require county clerks to develop a written audit policy and, in a race where there could be a conflict of interest, to designate another elected official to conduct the audits for that race.

In that election, Davidson lost to his GOP challenger Corey Astill, who will now be on the upcoming November ballot to compete in the general election. Astill is likely to win the Republican-majority Utah County, but he’ll face off with Forward Party candidate Russ Rampton.

Davidson “did not involve himself in the candidate nomination petition signature audit,” auditors wrote. “However, rather than a separate elected official, the elections director and an elections administrator performed the audit.”

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Auditors noted Davidson’s office indicated it wasn’t aware of the requirements to develop a written policy and to have another elected official audit a conflicted race.

Davidson, in a written response to the findings, disagreed with the audit’s findings and criticized it as “nitpicking.”

“While this performance audit is well-intentioned, we feel it went way beyond its intended purpose by identifying minor mistakes and creating an environment of contention,” Davidson wrote. “It is already difficult to find and retain well-qualified election workers, and this level of scrutiny will only drive more of them away and make it more difficult to hire election workers.”

Davidson also wrote that “performance audits should be used to identify issues that could meaningfully improve systems and controls, rather than nitpicking county clerks or threatening enforcement actions for minor errors made by humans operating within a complex, ever-changing system.”

“Unless the state intends to invest in automated robotics to implement these processes, performance audits should account for the complexities of the system and recognize that humans are doing their best to carry out these duties without the benefit of trial elections,” Davidson wrote.

In response to Davidson, auditors acknowledged that “human error is a factor in all systems,” but the mistakes they found “are repeat errors that appeared in prior audits and that have been made by multiple clerks.”

“That pattern is concerning and contributed to why we reported those mistakes and expect improvement,” auditors wrote. They acknowledged that Davidson won’t be in office when they conduct their follow-up audit, but “we still expect the subsequent clerk to implement the recommendations in our report.”

Issues in Wasatch County

Auditors also listed what they characterized as “several relatively minor shortcomings in processes” in Wasatch County, including ballot chain of custody, reconciliation and election audits.

The office, headed by Wasatch County Clerk-Auditor Joey Granger, had “failed to implement some recent changes to election requirements” even though the lieutenant governor’s office provided guidance in the state’s elections handbook.

For example, Wasatch County “correctly performed its post-election ballot audit but did not properly implement certain attestation requirements,” auditors wrote.

“Wasatch County filled out the election officer’s attestation form, but the forms for the audit participants did not contain the required information,” the report says. “Audit participants also did not complete the required training.”

Additionally, for the 2026 primary, Wasatch County did not have two auditors conduct its 1% ballot signature audit as required and reported doing the audit inconsistently.

“While the county performed other parts of its election audits correctly, it can still address the errors mentioned,” auditors wrote.

Auditors also found Wasatch County still has one room where ballots were processed that did not have proper camera monitoring as required under Utah law. They also said Wasatch County election staff did not use security seals on drop boxes.

“While we did not observe staff tampering with ballots during the pick-up process, security seals increase ballot integrity and security,” auditors wrote.

During Wasatch County’s reconciliation process, one double vote was also found after it had been counted, not before.

“The county processes mail-in envelopes and in-person votes through separate election machines that are not connected. Election workers must manually upload voter data so the machines know who has already voted and can identify double votes,” the report says. “In this case, the voter cast an in-person ballot, but that vote credit was not uploaded into the mail-in ballot processing machine before the county processed the voter’s mail-in ballot. Thus, the machine did not flag their mail-in ballot as a double vote and both ballots were counted.”

In discussing the issue with Granger and the lieutenant governor’s office, auditors said they confirmed that it’s possible for double votes to happen in not just Wasatch County but others, so they did a “limited review” of other counties to see if it could be happening in other parts of the state. However, they concluded the double vote in Wasatch County to likely be the only one.

To Utah’s chief election officer’s surprise, the DOJ says it has been investigating her since 2025

Like Utah County, Wasatch County also had issues with accepting candidate signature packets that lacked required information, and it lacked a policy designating that another elected official audit the signature packets in races that could have a conflict of interest.

“As a result, it was reported that staff in the clerk’s office — rather than another elected official — audited the packets for both candidates running for county clerk,” auditors wrote.

In this year’s primary, Granger lost to her Republican challenger, Park City Record Michelle Kellogg.

Granger, in a written response to the audit, said her office “recognizes the vital importance of free and fair elections, and the laws and administrative rules that ensure such elections.” While she objected to some of the specifics included in the audit, she echoed auditors’ characterizations that the “shortcomings identified in the audit are relatively minor, but even so I will strive to ensure strong and effective election controls.”

Issues in San Juan County

Auditors wrote that several issues they observed in San Juan County “stem from difficulty in keeping up with changing election requirements, including an unawareness or misunderstanding of those changes.”

In general, the San Juan County Clerk’s Office, headed by Lyman Duncan, “conducts elections well and is compliant” with recommendations that stemmed from their previous 2024 audit, auditors wrote.

“In an office of only three staff, we recognize the substantial efforts required to administer elections, address county-specific election issues, and fulfill the office’s other responsibilities,” auditors wrote. “However, we still identified several gaps in following election requirements.”

That included repeated errors in ballot intake processes, an improper reconciliation process in the 2025 general and 2026 primary elections, some shortcomings in the county’s post-election audit, and several requirements that weren’t followed when processing candidate signature packets.

Auditors said San Juan County still isn’t using “batch logs” — or tracking who handles batches of ballots — even though in 2024 it was flagged as an issue San Juan County should correct.

“The San Juan County Clerk reported that they considered using batch logs but decided against them because they only process one batch at a time,” the audit report says. “This is concerning since the county’s current processes do not account for all the elements required on a batch log. As a result, San Juan County is missing an important control for accountability and tracking of ballots.”

Duncan also did not include “proper numbers when attempting to balance their ballot reconciliation, making the results inaccurate.”

“As a result, the reconciliation process did not provide assurance that all ballots were accounted for and processed correctly,” auditors wrote.

Auditors said confusion in San Juan County over how to properly reconcile election results also happened in 2024, so they tried to connect the county’s election officials with the lieutenant governor’s office to ensure the clerk used the correct method. But it appears those efforts didn’t solve the issue.

“We are concerned that reconciliation has been a problem for three years in San Juan County and encourage the county clerk to work with other election officials to learn and understand how to do it correctly,” auditors wrote.

Additionally, the San Juan County Clerk’s Office didn’t meet all the requirements when processing one candidate’s signature packets. Under a law passed in 2025, clerks must certify signatures equal to 110% of the required signature threshold, in order to leave a buffer in case staff validated some signatures that should have been rejected, allowing extra signatures to make up for the errors.

“San Juan County met this requirement for all but one candidate,” auditors wrote. “The candidate likely submitted enough signatures to reach 110% of the required threshold, but the county stopped reviewing them once they reached the 100% threshold.”

Like the other counties, San Juan County also accepted signature packets even though some lacked the required information.

And auditors also noted some poll workers that lacked training and understanding of election laws.

“For example, during voter check-in, a voter informed a poll worker that they had moved. The poll worker incorrectly stated that the voter could cast a ballot tied to their old residence and update their address later,” auditors wrote. “Under state law, this is a scenario where the poll worker could have updated the individual’s address. Failing to do so could allow a voter to cast a ballot in the wrong precinct and vote in races for which they are not eligible.”

In a written response to the audit, Duncan listed each of the auditor’s recommendations and detailed the steps his office is taking to correct the issues.