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announcer: Tonight on "The Hinckley Report."

After months of anticipation and political turmoil, ballots begin to arrive in mailboxes.

What can voters expect to see on the 2024 ticket?

How are candidates shoring up support in the final days of the campaign season?

And what does new polling reveal about where Utahans stand on the presidential race?

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

I'm Jason Perry, Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week, we have Corey Norman, Chief of Staff; to Congressman Curtis; Suzanne Harrison, Democratic member of the Salt Lake County Council; and Robert Gehrke, news columnist at "The Salt Lake Tribune."

So glad to have you all on the program today.

I wanna get into some really exciting things happening in the political world, Robert, we're gonna start with you.

People in Utah are starting to get their ballots, they came in the mail, I got mine this week.

Most people will have them by the end of the week, kinda talk about your interviews with people, about how they're feeling about the process, because this is coming at a time when some are kind of putting the mail-in ballot process under fire.

Robert Gehrke: Yeah, I mean, the history of the mail-in ballot in Utah is interesting because you go back to 2014, we started piloting this project, because there was concern about low turnout and in 2016--2018.

Now we do a universal mail-in ballot and our turnouts increased 95--92% of people mail in their ballots now.

It was well-liked, in 2020, it hit a bit of a road bump, right, because there were questions nationally about whether mail-in ballots are secure.

There have been some--there have been some hiccups along the way, but I think, generally speaking, the public really likes the mail-in balloting.

It's nice to be able to get your ballot, do the research on some of the, you know, down level, down ticket races.

School board was one that always stumped me, you'd look at the candidates, you didn't know anything about them.

Now you can go research it a little bit.

I think it's a useful tool, but it is, as you kind of alluded to, under assault, I think, from some quarters because there's this sentiment among Trump world, really, that they are not secure, that they're easy to forge, and that it's--that people should be voting in person.

I think we're gonna hear a lot of discussion about that.

Jason Perry: We still-- Suzanne, talk about what Robert was just saying because it's gonna be interesting because people are gonna see a lot of things and a lot of names on these ballots that they don't recognize at all.

In fact, for some places it's two pages.

Not just front and back, but another page.

Please, everyone watching, you need to submit all those pages, but kind of talk about the opportunities there as a, you know, you've run for office a couple of times, right, you've been--successfully.

Talk about what we should do, how we can find out more about all these names on the ballot.

Suzanne Harrison: Well, importantly, in Utah, you have the option to vote in person or vote by mail, and the vote by mail option is used overwhelming, like, over 95% of Utahans use that option, and it allows time for people to do research at home, look things up on the internet, research candidates.

I think it's a really great way for people to take that time to become informed voters.

Jason Perry: Yeah, I want to talk about what it means for candidates.

You work with Congressman Curtis, running for Senate.

I'm just kind of curious and, please, Suzanne, if you don't mind also, because once it's in someone's hand, just wait for the oval to be filled out, how does the campaign change?

As voters, what are we going to start seeing from all the candidates now that they all want us to do it right now?

Corey Norman: Well, let me add this to the comments that everybody else made real quick, I am a believer that the more people that participate in the process, the better the election is going to be.

So, I love the mail-in ballots because it's increasing the pool and increasing voter turnout.

It does change the way that you do elections, though, because instead of the traditional "this is the day of the election and you're going to the--" and most of the people go to the polls that day.

You're now a three week ramp period, and so, you'll see this sort of this bell curve of the initial--you'll get, you know, we'll say 30% of the people will vote in the first couple of days.

As soon as they get their ballots, they'll turn it in, and then you'll get this--these folks at the end and a little bit of a lull in between.

And so most of the campaigns will really hit very hard on this, very--on the very front end, and the very back end, and then they're tracking to make sure that their voters and whatnot are turning them in, in between here.

But it's really sort of those 30% bookends of those say three, four days.

Jason Perry: And how did you approach that?

Suzanne Harrison: Similarly, when--as soon as ballots hit, it changes from persuading, or talking to voters, to encouraging folks to turn in those ballots as soon as possible because especially in a presidential year, it's who shows up and actually turns in that ballot.

Robert Gehrke: These campaigns have identified their likely voters and they're gonna--and so people who are getting the--all these text messages now, if they want those to stop, just turn in your ballot, they'll show up and you can avoid the text messages for the remaining three weeks.

Jason Perry: Of course, the last day to request a mail-in ballot is October 29.

All ballots have to be postmarked by November 4, if you're going to mail them, of course, you can drop them off the day of as well.

This is very interesting to watch how this, you know, because Utah seems to be at the front edge with this.

I want to get to a couple of things on this ballot, one in particular, which, you know, people stop and talk to me about, Robert, because let's talk about these judges because it's so interesting.

You get your whole ballot, there's a bunch of names we know, and then there's a section on "Should this judge be retained: yes or no?"

Talk about that for just a moment there because there's a lot that goes behind those--that yes or no vote.

Robert Gehrke: Yeah, I mean, this is sort of a unique thing for Utah to have this--its retention elections.

And it's hard for voters, I think, because there's a lot of them, we don't know--these names don't mean a whole lot to us, so, this judicial performance evaluation commission every year asks attorneys and people who have been in the courtroom to rate these judges and gives them a score, and recommends whether they be retained or not.

And it's a valuable tool, I think, for voters who, again, we don't know the specifics of all of these judges on the ballot.

And some of them are really important, I mean, this year, the chief justice of the Supreme Court Matthew Durrant's on the ballot, and we can talk a little bit about, you know, whether the legislature likes him right now or not, but it's just--the retention elections, almost always, the judges are retained, unless there's like a massive public campaign against them.

But it's important, I think, for voters to kind of understand, you know, who these people are and how they performed in the past.

Jason Perry: Yeah, you can go to a website and check them all out, but Suzanne, what's interesting about this is, you know, that there seems to be an interesting phenomenon in the state of Utah too, is there's a group of people who say, "Okay, I'll just vote for all of them," some that just say, "I'll vote for--against all of them."

You know, it's just an interesting mixed bag about how that works in the state of Utah.

Suzanne Harrison: Yeah, certainly, and the thing I'm gonna be watching for, especially with some recent setbacks in court cases, some Republican members of the legislature are a little frustrated with the judicial system right now.

And it's gonna be interesting to see if there's changes to how judges are appointed.

You know, our current system has been widely praised, and I hope that we recognize that it's balanced, helps keep politics out of this system, this independent branch.

Jason Perry: I'll get to the political side for a second, Robert, since you alluded to it a little bit, there are conversations out there in our legislature that they are looking at the court, so it comes at an interesting time.

Retention election at the very time when we're seeing a lot more of the courts in the political world.

Robert Gehrke: The courts have been very active in the last few months, right, they've blocked the--Utah's abortion law currently, they've blocked the bill that bans transgender athletes in high school sports, they've blocked this Amendment D from being on the ballot, and the legislature doesn't like to be told no.

And now they've been told no repeatedly, and there's talk on the Hill about ways to change the judicial nominating process and the retention process.

You know, do we wanna go all the way to having judges elected like they do in some states?

I personally think that would be a mistake--but I think Suzanne's right.

I think there's gonna be some, at least, discussions.

I talked to the Speaker this week and asked him about that, and he said there are just--there are discussions going on right now.

Do we want to have, you know, term limits for judges?

Do we want to expand the State Supreme Court?

You know, which is something that Republicans didn't necessarily like when President Biden proposed it, right?

Do we want to have, you know, before a retention election, do we want to bring them back in for another confirmation hearing before the Senate?

That might be something that they're considering, so, you know, I think there will be some changes, I think there's a lot of frustration among Republican leadership with the judiciary right now.

What those changes look like, I guess we'll see in the next month or two.

Jason Perry: Corey, a couple other things we're going to see on the ballot, when it comes to some constitutional amendments.

Amendment A and D, we've talked about it on the show a lot, when it comes to initiatives, for example, or changing the income tax.

We're gonna see them, but they're not going to count, but we do have B and C, so people will still be there.

It's interesting that, you know, both of those may have some of the same issues as A and D, but we're still gonna see those.

Corey Norman: We are still gonna see those.

I think the reason we're gonna see them, nobody's challenged them and they're not very controversial.

So I think that both of them will end up passing, and nobody's really making a fuss about either one of those.

Jason Perry: So, as you get around the state, I mean, there's a lot of talk about--with legislature looking at the initiative process itself.

Are you still hearing that a little bit, where do you see that going in the state?

Corey Norman: I do hear people talk a little bit about it.

There is a lot of frustration, which goes back to a little bit what Robert was referring to with the judges and whatnot.

There's this pent up sort of frustration, the legislature, like Robert alluded to, doesn't like to be told what to do, so it'll be interesting what happens this next legislative session because I think there's a lot of pressure on the legislators to push back.

There's gonna be a tendency to probably push back on what the judicial branch is doing, telling the legislature what to do.

Robert Gehrke: In a way, I think the judiciary saved the Republican legislature though because by taking D off the ballot, there was a lot of opposition to that amendment, and there was--from what I was hearing, a lot of anger.

People like the ballot initiative process, and I think it cut across parties.

Republicans, Democrats, Independents were all upset about this, and they were gonna turn out and punish the legislature for having done this, I think.

Having taken it off, maybe that, you know, tamps that down a little bit, but I think the legislature probably should be careful with how they proceed on this, 90 plus percent of Utahans like the ballot initiative process, and when they pass a ballot initiative, want it enacted according to the polling that we've seen.

And, you know, the Utah Foundation did a poll just recently, their Utah Priorities Project about the concerns that Utah voters have, and the number one was housing affordability, which shouldn't be too surprising, but the number two most important issue across parties was that they feel like politicians aren't listening to voters.

And so I think in some place that if the legislature is smart, they'll tread carefully on that.

Suzanne Harrison: And I just want to do a plug for Amendment B, this amendment will mean more money going to our schools at no cost to taxpayers, and it will involve parents in deciding how that funding is allocated in their local school.

Jason Perry: Excellent, thank you.

Corey Norman: I wanna add something real quick to what Robert said.

I really agree with him in that the legislature has to be super careful in how it's--how it proceeds here.

I think that they were running into this--the time frame was meeting--that they weren't able to message as effectively as I feel that they wanted to.

And it was kind of this weird, clunky way that it was being talked about.

Citizens, we want to be able to supersede what you do, you know, during the initiative process.

And so I think it's--I think it was--they're gonna run into a little bit of a buzzsaw.

If nothing else, just the time frame.

Jason Perry: You know, we'll watch this one very close, with very good insights on that.

I wanna get some polling, a little bit, about some of our local races.

I wanna talk about the race for governor for the state of Utah.

So, the King campaign and others did some internal polling.

Robert, I know you're working on some stories now about a recent poll that just came out today.

Let's break this down just a little bit to see how, you know, how Governor Cox is doing in this race.

Sort of that--the internal poll had Cox at 35, King at 24, and interestingly, this is what we're gonna talk about a little bit, had Phil Lyman as a write in at 19%.

The poll that just came out today has Governor Cox at 54%, King at 26%, and "Don't know" is at 20%, let's break this down.

Of course, Lyman is not in that particular poll because he's not officially a candidate, he's a write in candidate.

Robert Gehrke: Yeah, and these guys know this very well, too, is the results you get from polling often depend on how you ask the question.

And so the King campaign included Phil Lyman as an option.

When voters get their ballots, as we discussed earlier, he's not going to be on there, so it's a little tricky about how do you--how do you actually get a good gauge of his support.

And I think that accounts for a significant part of the difference.

The King campaign was saying this is an 11 point race and, you know, it's--we're within striking distance.

This new noble predictive insights poll seems to indicate that Cox has a more comfortable lead.

And so a lot of it depends on how much support Phil is able to get.

And write in candidates typically don't, you know, make too much of an impact, but the impact he could have in this race is how--what percentage is he siphoning off from Spencer Cox.

Suzanne Harrison: And I think 2016 taught us that you have to be a little skeptical of polls, but I think there's a lot of energy on the Democratic side with a new head of the ticket, that energy will translate to down ballot races.

Brian King's working hard, I think there's a lot of voters that would like to see more political balance at all levels of government in Utah.

Jason Perry: I'm cur--go ahead.

Corey Norman: Okay, you're curious, what?

Jason Perry: I'm curious about the polling question itself too, you and I have had these conversations in the past too, right, there are snapshots, but there's also a lot of ways to get an answer.

Corey Norman: Oh there is, you know, we did some polling and stuff, our campaign did some polling and we're asking very similar questions.

It was saying, you know, if given an option of somebody else, without naming the write in candidate on there, and so you can get whatever sort of data that you want, depending on what kind of question you ask.

Let me just say, Brian King, he can work, he's gonna lose this race, Spencer Cox is gonna win, Phil Lyman is probably gonna make a little bit of a, you know, he's gonna peel off a certain percentage, but I feel like Phil's campaign.

It sort of reminds me a little bit of like "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie series.

I mean, it was sort of cute at first, and then the longer it goes on you're like, is this gonna be done?

And next episode it is--you know, something else pops up and it just sort of gives it more life.

And I think that he's gonna get--Cox is gonna get a large percentage, King is gonna get, you know, 30%, Phil Lyman's gonna get a 5% write in, and we're gonna be--Spencer Cox is gonna win.

Jason Perry: We're still gonna see some fireworks about it, maybe from Phil Lyman, though.

Robert Gehrke: Yeah, Phil says--upset about this new audit that came out this week that said that Spencer's--some of Cox's signatures, and some of Curtis's signatures, and Derek Brown's signatures were validated when they shouldn't have been.

And this goes, you know, these are the signatures they go collect to get their name on the primary ballot.

They need 28,000 of them, it's not an easy task, it's pretty expensive actually.

But, you know, they're validated by people who are looking at them.

You know, it's a subjective process, and there's some human error in there, and the state auditor or the state legislative auditors, and state auditor John Dougall have both done audits now that said that they were invalidating some that shouldn't have been.

Phil is having a rally, or had a rally on Thursday to say that, you know, he wants Spencer Cox kicked off the ballot because he's an illegitimate candidate because he didn't gather enough signatures.

Presumably, that would also mean that Congressman Curtis and Attorney General Derek Brown would be kicked off the ballot too.

I don't think that's going to happen.

If he wanted that to happen, the time to challenge them was back in February.

And you know, this--it would invalidate the primary essentially and take away the votes of, you know, about 455,000 voters in the state.

Corey Norman: So this is it--to Robert's point, this is a very expensive process.

And I get that there's--there are some errors and there's a real opportunity for the state to make some changes in this whole process.

But I will tell you, there's a couple of years ago, my sister-in-law had signed the documents and she has been a registered Repu--or signed our ballot--or, sorry, our--the petition to get John on the ballot.

And she'd been a registered Republican for the last 10 years and I went and looked at the list and her signature had been kicked off.

So there are some weird things with the signatures, but I'm telling you, we turned in probably, I mean, thousands and thousands of signatures over and above what the 28,000 was.

So I don't have any doubt that John would have qualified or that Derek would have qualified.

And really, once the state says you've met the threshold, you stop because it's an expensive process.

Nobody wants to spend more money than they have to spend on this.

Jason Perry: How did this come to you, because, you know, you're connected to this process well, it was John Curtis, Derek Brown, and Governor Cox, all the three of those were the ones that are--talked about this.

How did this come to you, and kind of, how do you approach it, because you have to really think about the numbers itself and when someone tells you, "You had enough signatures," you do stop.

Corey Norman: Right, we--well, we knew that there is--this gets down to the weeds a little bit, but with every person that turns in, in each, you know, you've got your first person that turned in--and average is about 92% validity, and every person that turns in after that for the same race loses about 7% to 8% off.

So we knew that we were only gonna get about 75% validation rate.

So, therefore, I mean, the quick math says you got to overshoot by X amount.

And so, we took that into consideration when we were turning it signatures, and it turned out--I think we ended up with, you know, 3500 signatures more than what we needed.

Suzanne Harrison: And I think importantly, the two audits found about 99% accuracy.

There were no instances of made up names or ineligible voters on those lists.

And I think, bigger picture, my concern is instances of, often Republican candidates, after having their day in court not accepting the results of free and fair elections.

And will we see that after next month's election?

It's dangerous and potentially destabilizing.

Robert Gehrke: It feels to me too, like, when these people--when these staffers for the Davis County clerk, who did this signature review, are looking at these signatures, I think it's probably better that they err on the side of counting a signature rather than rejecting one because, you know, in the grander scheme of things, we're talking 28,000 signatures, but if that voter did sign that petition, their, you know, their voice should be heard.

And I think it's better to err on the side of including signatures that maybe somebody else will look at down the road and say that they shouldn't have been on there.

Plus, at the end of the day, you know, the referees made the call, the players played the game and there's no do-overs.

So there's no review in this, so I think Phil is going to make whatever points he can off of this, he's gonna make as much noise about it as he can, because that's the only way people pay attention to him.

Jason Perry: Let's get to the presidential race for a second, Corey, I know you're watching this very closely too, but through the Utah lens, how Utahans are looking at them.

The new Noble Predictive Insights poll this week showed, in Utah, Donald Trump is--they project he would win at 54%; Harris at 38%; with 8% undecided.

That's a--54%, it was, you know, it was probably gonna win in Utah, but it's by a smaller margin than sometimes Republicans have in the past.

Corey Norman: I think it's pretty fair to say that, in Utah you--particularly with, let's say Republican voters, you've got a third, a third, a third.

You've got a third of the people, a third of the Republicans that will vote for him no matter what.

You've got a third of the people that--a third of the Republicans that really, really struggle with him.

And then the folks in the middle that are kind of like, mm, you know, go back and forth.

Trump traditionally has struggled in Utah, he's probably gonna lose Salt Lake County, he's probably gonna lose Summit County, and he probably is gonna lose Grand County.

That would be my--that's sort of what I think will end up happening, but it's really difficult for people from Utah to separate the politics from the policies and the personality.

That's a struggle.

Jason Perry: It's interesting in this poll, Suzanne, they substituted Trump for another Republican and it went up a few more points, it went from 16 to 25.

It's interesting, it looks like Trump will probably, you know, win the state of Utah, but those Republicans themselves would still probably have preferred maybe a different candidate.

Suzanne Harrison: I think we've seen a lot of divisive rhetoric in that I think Utahans want, you know, elected officials that are working together, solving problems.

Jason Perry: Yeah, I want to get to the same poll a little bit, candidates often watch, I'm curious how you do on the favorable-unfavorable opinion people have of them.

In this particular race, the unfavorables, Trump is at 50%, 53% unfavorable; and Harris is at 54% unfavorable.

That's pretty close right there and that's pretty high unfavorable ratings, Robert.

Robert Gehrke: Yeah, I think this is something that we've talked about on this program before.

I think voters are kind of frustrated with the choices they were given.

They were more frustrated, I think when it was a Biden-Trump race, but I think that, you know, the two party system, people feel boxed in by it.

And I think there are opportunities and we could talk, if we wanted to, about some of the legislative races this year.

There are a bunch of leg--like 13 independent candidates running for the legislature this year, and then there are United Utah party candidates, there are people who, I think, what I'm gonna be watching on election night is how those candidates do, because I think that'll speak to some of the willingness of voters to, you know, throw off the two party system and go with somebody else.

You know, I think there's--but it's an opportunity, I think, for third parties and independent candidates to make some headway this year.

Jason Perry: I want to talk about this spread just a bit when it comes to the polling because I always think it's so interesting.

I know we hit on it a little bit, but the presidential race, when it came to President Trump in the past, Hillary Clinton, and President Biden, you didn't always get the--Corey, the most clear picture there.

There were people who didn't really answer those polls, either they ignored them entirely, they don't click on the link, or they just don't answer honestly.

Corey Norman: So just this process in general--so I tell people all the time, I'm sort of like the political wet blanket.

That when people come to me and they want to talk about politics and stuff, I'm the political wet blanket because the math has the math.

And the way that these polls come out, you have to be able to speak to the numbers, figure out where your voters are, make sure that they're getting out to vote.

But, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, these--Trump's going to win, his unfavorables are high, but I think that most people in Utah sort of say, "I'm okay with that."

Jason Perry: How does it affect down ballot, you know, because Robert was talking about that, we have a lot of very consequential races in the state of Utah with our local leaders, how does that sort of unfavorable impact down ballot races?

Suzanne Harrison: I think the big change in this was when the top of the ticket changed from President Biden to Vice President Harris.

I've been talking to voters throughout this election season and I noticed a huge change in that, the energy level, the excitement, and it allowed us to talk to folks about more local races because they weren't obsessed with how unpopular the top of the ticket was.

Jason Perry: I want to get into some potential consequences of whoever wins in this potential race, particularly when it comes to appointments, which I just think is so interesting, because we're already seeing articles about there.

Corey, you may have the inside scoop in Washington, D.C., but Harris has said that she will appoint a Republican to her cabinet if she wins.

And that, you know, for a long time, that was the case with whoever was in the office.

And one of the big speculations already was Senator Romney, a story came out almost immediately after she said that.

Like Secretary of State, I think is what the story was.

Corey Norman: Has anybody asked Senator Romney if he wants to do this?

I might see him later, maybe I'll ask him about it.

This is one of these things where I think there's a lot of speculation on what it'll do, and I actually--if I'm Senator Romney, I'm in a place in my life where this is--I don't need this, I don't need that in my life.

I just wanna go hang out with my grandkids.

So there are a handful of Republicans, that my guess--that she may reach out to and ask if they want to be part of the cabinet, and I'm all about bipartisan cabinet and making sure that you have diverse voices in the room and so that you're not--so you don't just operate in an echo chamber.

And I think, you know, I'm trying to think back, maybe it was the Bush administration, Bush 43, that we really sort of had a lot of bipartisan folks that were in the cabinet.

But, I'm an advocate for it, if I'm Romney, I'm not sure if I wanna do that.

Robert Gehrke: One of the names you didn't mention that, I think probably, has the best chance of actually having a cabinet post is Jon Huntsman Jr., you know, he's been an ambassador to Russia, ambassador to China.

You know, I think he's got the resume to potentially be a secretary of state.

Jason Perry: And he was Republican appointed by a Democrat to one of those positions.

A couple other ones, interesting, Suzanne, too, people are talking about if President Trump wins, former President Trump wins, Sean Reyes, Mike Lee, Spencer Cox.

Are these all names that are potential appointments somewhere?

Suzanne Harrison: Buckle up, we'll see, right?

I do think though our government is better when we have folks with different perspectives in the room when complex issues are being decided.

It's a slippery slope to groupthink.

Jason Perry: So are--you were about to say something.

Corey Norman: So, again, has anybody asked Mike Lee or Sean Reyes if "you want to do this"?

I--so, I've been in a lot of conversations over the last couple of months, since my boss has been running, and a lot of this has been speculation.

Particularly this last election, people are saying, "Oh, if, you know, if John Curtis wins, and, you know, let's say Mike Lee's appointed, you know, who's the next person?"

I mean, everybody's like, "Oh, this person, that person."

This is all total speculation.

I mean, there's a lot of rumors, everybody likes to talk about the rumors.

Jason Perry: We'll keep doing that, that's gonna have to be it.

Corey Norman: It is fun, right?

Jason Perry: It's the fun game, it's true.

Thank you so much for your insights this evening and thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast on PBSUtah.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

announcer: In part by Merit Medical and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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