Jay Evensen
  • Front Page
  • Opinions
  • Second Thoughts
  • Portfolio
  • Awards
  • About

Will your candidate body slam a reporter?

5/31/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Would you like to know before you cast your ballot whether your favorite candidate is the kind who would body slam a reporter?

Careful — I’m not asking whether you support or oppose body slamming reporters, just whether you would like to know this before voting. (But please, let me put on a bike helmet and strap a pillow to my back first, if you don’t mind.)

Montana’s recent special election kerfuffle, in which a last-minute bit of bad behavior may have been negated by ballots already in the mail, has made even ardent vote-by-mail advocates swallow hard.
“It’s given us all a little pause,” Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox told me on Wednesday. Cox, whose office supervises elections in the state, has been a big supporter of the mail-in balloting movement that has swept parts of Utah and much of the rest of the nation.

He still is a fan, mainly because, “I know this (Montana situation) is a worst case scenario, and one of the things I feel strongly about is that it’s never good to legislate for the worst case scenario.”

In other words, candidates aren’t likely to roam the countryside from now on looking for journalists to attack. I appreciate that optimism, considering 22 people so far have signed up to run for Utah’s third congressional district seat in a special election Nov. 7, and there aren’t that many of us here to slam around.

So much for the worry, proposed by some on the left end of the political spectrum, that conservatives will use Montana as an argument to do away with early voting. Utah, at least, is one conservative state where access to voting, including same-day registration in many counties, has been embraced.

That doesn’t mean voter turnout here is anything to brag about, but that’s a different column for a different time.

Democracy, freedom and open governance always have required tradeoffs. We tacitly acknowledge some criminals go free because we won’t tolerate the kind of totalitarian state that would rob us of due process. We apparently are willing to run the risk that some terrorists might be harder to catch because we don’t want our phones tapped (although that one is harder to gauge).

And, if we want easier access to the ballot box, we agree to risk voting before knowing about last-minute body slams.

In Montana, CNN reported the Secretary of State’s office received many calls from people wanting to know whether they could change their mailed-in votes after the Republican candidate for the state’s lone House seat, Greg Gianforte, allegedly attacked a reporter.

They couldn’t, and Gianforte won the special election. A total of 357,596 mail-in ballots were distributed. Nearly three-quarters of those were returned before the incident occurred.

Would it be possible to devise a system that did allow people to change their votes right up to the end? The short answer is no.

“Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to do that yet,” Cox said. If people flooded their county elections offices demanding to change their mailed-in ballots, workers would face an enormous task locating them. Then they would face the larger question of whether they were violating the voter’s right to a secret ballot, presuming most of those people would be deciding to vote against the candidate who had done a bad thing.

Only online voting would allow people to change votes easily. But designing a safe and secure online voting system remains as feasible as designing a perpetual motion machine.
Cox reminded me there is no such thing as a perfect voting system. He also said many vote-by-mail Utahns wait until the last minute to cast their ballot, eliminating the chance they will miss a last-minute body slam.

That offers some comfort.

For the upcoming special election, only the parts of the Third District that lie in Salt Lake County will allow votes by mail, further reducing the risks. Utah County still has an old-fashioned Election Day.
​
Even so, it’s sobering to remember that plenty of politicians have waited until they were safely on the other side of an oath and clothed in power before revealing their darker selves. No system can protect us from that.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Search this site


    Like what you read here?

      Please subscribe below, and we'll let you know when there is a new opinion.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Picture

    The author

    Jay Evensen is the Senior Editorial Columnist of the Deseret News. He has nearly 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities.

    Archives

    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    Campaign 2012
    Congress
    Crime
    Culture
    Iran
    Oil And Gas
    Poverty
    Steroids
    Taxes
    Utah
    Washington
    World Events
    World Events

    Links

    Deseret News
    Newslink
    Marianne Evensen's blog

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.