♪♪♪ male announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is made possible in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund.

Jason Perry: Tonight on "The Hinckley Report," lawmakers and business owners debate how to respond to President Biden's controversial vaccine order.

Citizens across the state propose their own redistricting maps as battle lines are drawn.

And new reporting shines a spotlight on efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

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

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

Covering the week, we have Sonja Hutson, political reporter with K-U-E-R, Lindsay Whitehurst, reporter with the Associated Press, and Matt Canham, senior reporter with The Salt Lake Tribune.

So glad to be with you all this evening, a lot happening in the state and around the country in politics, but I'll tell you one consistent thing we're talking about is vaccines.

And so, Lindsey, we'll start with you for a minute, it's been a week since President Biden put out his vaccine requirement for certain size businesses, businesses, a certain number of employers, how is that being received now in the state of Utah and what are they planning to do?

Lindsay Whitehurst: Well, there's certainly a number of folks in the Utah government that don't love this idea.

Utah lawmakers are--a lot of folks kind of--it's an interesting needle to thread, right?

There are a good number of leaders who say, get the vaccine, that's the way out of this, but we don't want to mandate it, we don't wanna make people.

It's, in some ways, a similar paradigm to mask wearing, right, is that especially early on, not so much now, but early on there was certainly that message that we encourage everyone to wear it but we don't want to make anybody do it.

And it's a little bit of a fine line to walk, right, and so that's been the conversation so far, is what do we do about this?

And what are businesses going to do?

Are businesses going to want to go to court?

Is that something that large businesses are going to want to deal with?

Or perhaps there's a little more go along to get along.

I think there's still a lot of wait and see there.

Jason: Yeah so, Matt, as we wait and see, it's interesting, our legislature's looking at options, for sure.

There's a October 4 meeting scheduled for people to give input on this, but it's not entirely clear what those options are for our elected officials.

Matt Canham: Well, to start, the Biden Administration needs to actually present the rule.

They made an announcement, but haven't given us the details, and that's why we're in a little bit of a limbo.

Our attorney general is ready to sue, but he doesn't know what he's suing for or against.

We have the legislature, who wants to take action, but exactly what that means.

What the Biden administration has said is, if you work for a company that has 100 employees or more, you have to get vaccinated or get tested weekly.

But there's a lot of rules that can go around that, how do you enforce it?

You know, when does it start?

There's a lot of things that we don't know yet, and so you have Republican leaders ready to take action, but there's nothing to take action against yet.

Lindsay: Well, and I think one thing we saw with masks was, you know, people fall into groups, where they they're definitely gonna wear it or they're definitely not, and then there's a group in the middle that maybe doesn't feel like it, but if once it's a rule, they say, well, I'll do it.

I think a similar dynamic may play out with vaccines, that if there are folks who really don't want to get vaccinated, there's probably a way they can find to do that, you know.

This is so far, you know, people with more than 100--businesses with more than 100 employees, there are smaller businesses that don't have that rule.

So there are gonna be different ways that this will play out.

The other kind of nuance here that I think will be sort of interesting is we have a labor shortage issue in Utah, and so, especially in healthcare, even fairly small numbers of people who are really determined not to get it, that that could end up being an issue, especially for some of those employers that are really under pressure right now.

So, there's a lot of different factors to play out here, I think, still.

Jason: For sure, Sonja, you look like you had a comment.

Sonja Hutson: Yeah, I mean, the other thing I think we haven't talked about yet is just what options does Utah have to push back against this.

Our leadership has made it abundantly clear that they want to.

You know, like Matt said, our Attorney General, Sean Reyes, is ready to file a lawsuit against it.

But just based on stuff that I've seen from legal experts, it's not entirely clear how much standing an individual state would have to do that.

If a business, who is the one that's being directly impacted, directly, you know, harmed by this mandate, they would have a lot more standing to sue potentially then the state.

Also, legislatively, I mean, the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution kind of ties the state's hand a little bit, because this would clearly fall under the federal government's law takes precedent over state law if they were to try to circumvent this with a state bill.

Jason: Which leaves us, Sonja, to your point about these businesses.

We just talked about them for just a moment, what are business going to do?

We see some groups, it was interesting, we saw that the National Guard, Utah National Guard, saying they're going to require vaccines, but what are you seeing from the business community itself?

If it is left to them, let's say some of our businesses, a lot of them under 100 employees, what are they doing right now?

What are they talking to you about for their plans going forward?

Sonja: Yeah well, I mean, businesses under 100 employees, this mandate doesn't apply to them, so, but in terms of larger employees, I think that there's kind of a sense--and this, again, to connect it back to masks like Lindsay was doing, it's the same kind of thing where just these regular employees have to be enforcers of public health rules.

You know, enforcing masks, enforcing vaccines at the door, I think there's a lot of pushback against that, particularly because that's not a super attractive job to people, and that's especially concerning because there is a labor shortage.

Jason: So, this is leading a little bit to--this discussion's really hot over the last couple of days, Lindsay, talking about certain treatments.

Okay, we've talked about the mandates, we've talked about the masks, but Utah's also talking about the treatments themselves, this monoclonal antibody treatment for people who do have COVID.

Talk about what our elected officials are looking at there, because there seems to be some serious supporters.

Lindsay: Mm-hmm, and Senate President Stuart Adams, he's a big one, he's a real booster of this treatment, which it does seem to be some evidence that it is an effective helper at least.

And, you know, to my mind, more treatments is always good and prevention is even better, right?

That if we can avoid more-- fewer people getting COVID to begin with, that seems like it's an even better way to handle this crisis.

Jason: Well, I want--go ahead Matt.

Matt: I was just gonna say that this treatment is an interesting one, because it's goal is to stop you from having to go to the hospital, but you only get it after you're sick.

The people who get this treatment are people who have the coronavirus and have certain--they score high enough on a test of their age, what kind of health conditions they have, that they can get this treatment.

We only get a certain number of these treatments in a shipment, and it's controlled by the federal government.

So, Intermountain Healthcare has a tent outside where 50 people can get these infusions a day, and the goal is to reduce the number of people hospitalized.

It's helpful that, you know, when we're talking about trying to make sure our hospitals aren't overrun, but this treatment doesn't stop the spread of the coronavirus.

You'll only get it if you have it.

Jason: Yeah so, Sonja, this is an interesting kind of public policy issue right here.

So, this is that old, that old saying, right there, do you want to put guardrails at the top of the cliff or the ambulance at the bottom of it?

Which is a little bit of the difficulty for this right here is, this treatment's available, but our public officials, but certainly the medical community is trying to say, yes, it's a treatment, but this is not-- does not say we should not get our vaccine, because that's the best policy, right?

Sonja: Yeah, I mean, what I've heard from doctors and from the medical community is like, yes, this is an effective treatment, it keeps people out of the hospital.

Of course, we should be using it where we need to, but the concern is that focusing too much on it, according to these doctors, could potentially prevent people from getting vaccinated, because some people may see this as an alternative to getting vaccinated.

But at the end of the day, this is a lot more expensive, it's a lot more time consuming, we talked earlier about how there is a labor shortage in the healthcare field right now, so what's a lot easier, faster, and, you know, more effective, potentially, is just getting vaccinated.

And so, there's a concern among medical professionals that too much of a focus on this treatment could prevent people from getting vaccinated, which in the long run is a much better solution than this monoclonal antibody.

Jason: Lindsay, what are you hearing in the community?

'Cause it's just so interesting to here these elected officials pushing certain treatment options, and of course talking about getting the vaccine, but you also have the medical side really weighing in on this.

How is this being received in the state of Utah, these two sides trying to come together for the collective good?

Lindsay: You know what, I think a lot of people are really trying to navigate all of this, right?

And a lot of a lot of people are making these kind of small daily decisions about what's my risk tolerance, what's my--I want to get back to a version of a normal life, but how do I do that while keeping myself and my family safe?

And there is lots of little tiny decisions that people are making more and more often now.

And you have to kind of--you get so many different kinds of messages from so many sources, you have to just kind of mix all of those together and then add in your your own personal situation, and you have to just figure something out.

And I'm a parent, so I talk to a lot of other parents that are just constantly making those calculations and just trying to navigate it and stay safe and stay healthy and keep their families healthy.

So, I think, I think people are still really kind of going through it, and the returning to normal life is really good, but also adds a whole 'nother set of interesting factors to think about.

Matt: I heard Dr. Angela Dunn with Salt Lake County Health Department talk about this treatment, and one of the points that she made is, you can't get it if you are--if you've had the disease for more than seven days.

And so, not only do you have to have certain risk factors, it has to be early in the disease life cycle for it to actually have its effect.

Lindsay: You have to have been tested so you can have it.

Matt: That's her point, you have to get tested.

So, if you want to use this treatment and you have a little scratchy throat, if you have a cough, that's when you get tested, because this doesn't work when you get seriously sick.

It's--the point is to stop you from getting seriously sick.

Jason: Really great point, we'll follow this one closely, 'cause I think it's going to continue to be a conversation here in the state of Utah.

Matt, while we have you here, I want to go to, kind of, current political, kind of, rumblings, but it goes all the way back to 2020, which is so interesting.

I want to talk about what's happening in upcoming elections, but it goes back to 2020.

So interesting this week, of course, I remember conversations you had with Bob Woodward when he was here, just wrote a book, "Peril," which is very interesting, but he talks about Mike Lee, our own Senator Mike Lee, and his involvement and efforts to really go look into whether or not the last, that elections was kind of hijacked in some way or fraudulent in some way.

Matt: This goes back to January 6.

People might remember the mobs that ransacked the Capitol.

This is about certifying the presidential election, the Electoral College.

Mike Lee was a co-chairman of Donald Trump's campaign.

He is a Donald Trump supporter, and the Donald Trump White House sent him a memo saying, this is how you can change the electoral college outcome and give Trump another term.

What you do, is you throw out every state that sends in two slates of electors, and Mike Lee, according to this book, looked into this.

He called states and said, "What are you seeing on the ground?

Are you submitting two slates of electors?

What's happening here?"

That has happened in the past, in individual cases, the state has sent two slates of electors, there has been controversy in an individual state.

In 2020, during all this talk of voter fraud, no state actually did that.

Every state only sent one slate of electors, every state said that what happened in their state was a legitimate election.

And so, after the ransacking of the Capitol, when Mike Lee had his time to speak, he actually addressed this on January 6.

And you can go back, and you can see his speech, where he said, he called these states, "Do you have another slate of electors?"

They didn't, so Mike Lee voted to certify the election, certify that President Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.

Jason Perry: Well, Lindsay, go and talk about that a little bit, 'cause, it's true, and it's prompted a tweet from President--former President Trump to Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham who is part of that as well.

Lindsay: And he wasn't happy was the upshot.

And I think, look, this just goes to yet another way that the past is not past.

You know, we are still going, we are still talking about this, we are still going to talk about it.

This is very--this issue and this controversy is going to continue to be a force in American politics for at least the coming years, and we're-- this is still going to be very much a conversation.

Despite the pandemic, despite immigration, all the other major issues we've got going on, this get--this is going to keep kind of going on, I say in the background, but for some folks it's not, it's the foreground, it's still very much what we're gonna be talking about at least until the midterms and possibly until 2024.

Jason: So, Sonja, does this surprise you at all?

It is interesting, we're pretty far away from that election now, already looking to the next one, is this recurring theme about the security of elections going to carry forward into this next interim election and into the next presidential election?

Sonja: Absolutely, I mean, just look at the poll data.

There are a huge percentage, particularly of Republicans, who think that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

And, you know, we're almost a year out from that election, and so to me that's a signal it's definitely not going anywhere.

People are still talking about former President Trump running again in 2024.

I mean, like Lindsay said, the past is not in the past.

People, because Donald Trump is no longer on Twitter, I think people that aren't necessarily paying super close attention would say oh, you know, he's not relevant anymore, he's not president, he's not on Twitter, I don't see his tweets anymore.

Very, very much still, of course, in Republican politics.

Jason: I want to reference that, this poll that Sonja was referring to for just a minute, Matt, because I think it does give us a little bit of a signal about what's coming.

And just quickly, the question was, and this is a Deseret News Hinckley poll, do you think there was widespread election fraud?

41% of Utahns said yes, 49% said no, but the interesting part to what Sonja was just talking about was whether or not people in the state of Utah approve or disapprove of someone who objected to the election results, and this was what was interesting, 56% of Utahns, this finally got above a majority, disapproved of someone who objected to those election results.

It's just so interesting, we continue, it sounds like the whole group believes this issue is going to continue all the way into the next election cycle, but Utahns by and large, at least a majority of them, would object to someone who says that it was a fraud.

Matt: I find those results to be fascinating and concerning.

If you think someone stole the election, you should not be opposed to someone trying to overturn it.

If you really believe an election was stolen in the United States, you should fight for that.

The concern is, you shouldn't believe that, because there's no evidence of it.

We're a year out.

There's no state that has a court case that went forward, that has a report, there's no secretary of state or county clerks who are saying our election was fraudulent.

We just had in Arizona a months long hand recount in Maricopa County that Donald Trump was supporting, and it found that the results were what the results were, Biden won that county by a huge margin, and that group actually found extra votes for Biden, not for Trump.

We're at the point, there is no evidence that there is widespread voter fraud.

There--it's the same, it's the same amount of evidence that we have that the Earth is flat that we have is that there our elections are not secure.

Our elections are secure.

Lindsay: And the finding was that people would disapprove of somebody who objected to the election.

Interesting, that would almost seem to be an indication that perhaps there's a little fatigue among at least a portion of the electorate.

So, that'll be interesting to see if that is something that does sort of play out.

If, I am going to assume they're probably folks who were a little bit more in the middle.

I wonder if there is some going to end up being a little bit of fatigue around this especially as those, you know, the bricks keep coming in that wall of, look, the election was valid.

It's gonna be interesting to see how voters continue to react to that.

Jason: Yeah, so Sonja, some some work that you have done that I think is interesting, because hasn't died in Utah County, we have people already pushing the county clerk, Amelia Powers, to do some kind of audit.

Of course, she disputes what she said about that, but push even for her to audit election results.

Sonja: Yeah, I've actually talked to several county clerks earlier this week, and this is not just a Utah County issue, this is a statewide issue.

County clerks have told me that they're just seeing unprecedented numbers of calls of public records requests, of, you know, request to tour the facilities, to inspect their vote counting machines.

And, you know, they're happy to do that, they love talking about how great and secure, you know, their process is in their county, but it's really a statewide issue that is still going on.

In fact, earlier this month the Utah county clerk held a, like, a town hall night where he answered questions from people about election security, he let people look at the machines.

So, there's definitely still a very strong ongoing effort to combat all this misinformation.

Jason: Sonja, there's an article you wrote recently that talked about voter identification efforts and the potential bill coming this next legislative session.

Talk about that for just a moment, because it goes to a little bit to the election security about how private our information is when we are participating in the process.

Sonja: Yeah, it's a little complicated, so bear with me.

So, basically the context for and the reason that some county clerks want this bill is that, like I said, there have been people that have been submitting public records requests and one of the things that they have requested is the statewide voter rolls, or maybe they're just doing it in their county, but they request these voter roles, which--and then when they compare them to the vote tallies and things like that, there seems to be a mismatch between the number of registered voters and the number of people that actually cast their ballot, and so to them, they're like, oh, this is clear evidence of fraud, but if you go and talk to county clerks, there's actually a really simple explanation for why that mismatch exists, and it's because about 30% of voter records are private records, so they're not included on those public voter roles that anyone can purchase.

So, one suggestion that county clerks have brought to the legislature, and there's actually a draft bill that was discussed last week, it would make all of--it would include all of those private records on the public voter rolls, but instead of their name or any identifying information, there would be just a randomized number assigned to that person, so you would just see, like, randomized number, this person, you know, voted at this precinct on this day.

You know, they voted early, whatever, and so you would have a more complete picture of who voted and who's on the voter role to kind of alleviate some of that concern.

However, there is the big caveat that you will never, ever be able to match up voter records and vote tally, they're, yeah, so because the voter rolls are just constantly changing, people are registering for the first time, they're dying, they're moving, they're changing their party affiliation, so they're trying to get a little bit closer to that match, but there's never ever gonna be a one to one match.

Jason: Of course, all of this, Matt, leads to some redistricting efforts too, 'cause not only are elected officials and people who want to run for office looking at all the things we just talked about, how to confront the underlying idea that some feel like there is some fraud or there's not privacy in it, but we're all-- at the same time, we're trying to draw new district lines here in the state of Utah.

Our redistricting commission-- committee is meeting with people all over the state of Utah, and now is the time when people in the community get to participate a little bit.

Matt: Yes, if you want to draw your own map for what you think should be the congressional districts or the state house or Senate districts or school districts, you can go to the redistricting website, just Google Utah Redistricting maps.

You can find this, and you can draw your own and submit it, and these committee members are asking for help.

There are many ways these districts can be drawn, and so they're looking to analyze this, they're going to try to get this done in short order.

This has been a delayed process because the census, which only happens every 10 years, took a little longer to get done.

So, these districts need to get done so candidates can start jumping in these races, and we can have these elections next year.

Jason: Yeah, it's interesting, so I'm just gonna give the numbers so that our viewers can go try their maps.

All your districts have to have 818,000 people in it.

I mean, it seems so easy, but it is absolutely not, which is why it's so interesting to see what's going to come.

And of course, Lindsay, there are people who want to jump in this process, even people in the positions right now, particularly in the fourth congressional district, that are watching that very closely.

That's something Burgess Owens is watching to see if those lines change.

Lindsay: Right and that that district, is of course, has historically been one of the most competitive in the state, right, has flipped back and forth.

I think when you see the redistricting, I think that probably won't be as competitive going forward, just a guess, we'll see.

Just a guess, I'm not staking any money on it right now, but I think it's a possibility, and I think that that's an interesting district.

I think a lot of people are gonna be looking at this closely, and I would--I think that some of these maps are gonna be cool.

I wonder if we could do like a video game around that, right, we can maybe be create that, like, some user generated sort of thing, so I think that he could be neat.

Matt: I think the two biggest issues are-- Sonja: The software online does kind of feel like a video game.

I was playing around with it, although it's a very difficult video game, like we were talking about earlier.

It sounds very simple, but it's actually very difficult.

Matt: A few things to look at is how they split up Salt Lake County.

Is it in three districts, is it in two, that's a question that they're gonna have a lot.

Also, the fourth district, which is the west side of Salt Lake County and going into Utah County, is also where there's been a tremendous amount of growth in our population.

So to Lindsay's point, why would that become an easier district for Burgess Owens to win going forward?

Well, it has too many people, they have to siphon some people out, so if you're the Republican controlled legislature, it's going to be fairly easy to identify areas that have in the past been inclined to support a Democrat and put them in another district, so that those numbers, as you said, actually equal out.

Jason: Our final topic I want to get into just for a moment because it's so prominent in the headlines today too.

So, Lindsay, I wanna talk about what's happening at the border.

Utah has been at the forefront, saying that they will take refugees, I think we're gonna get 765 refugees here in the state in the near future, but our own governor started to weigh in on the crisis at the boarder, what is he saying?

Lindsay: He's worried about it, and a lot of Republicans are.

This is, it is something--we've seen some harrowing imagery from the border, and, of course, you see--what you're seeing right now is a lot of Haitian people who have been affected by a massive earthquake that are trying to come across, and it's a really difficult situation.

Immigration has been a really, really difficult issue in our country for at least a decade now, and this is kind of the latest flashpoint there, right?

And Utah as a state has historically been welcoming of refugees.

When, with, on Afghanistan, the Governor put out that letter saying, send people here, we want to welcome people and I think that culturally speaking, that Utah is, it wants to, to welcome people who need help, and, heck, we have a need for people too, we're talking about a labor shortage.

When you have have jobs to fill, welcoming in more people can help alleviate that issue too.

So historically speaking, Utah has been very welcoming, and it'll be interesting to see going forward how that, how that kind of plays out with this latest, kind of, flashpoint that we're seeing.

Jason: Sonja, our own governor, Governor Cox, joined several other GOP governors requesting a meeting with the White House to talk about this.

Based on what, kind of, what Lindsay just talked about too, why is--would a Utah governor be helping to lead that particular discussion in the White House, and why would they be inclined to listen?

Sonja: I mean, Governor Cox joined together with a lot of other governors.

So, I think we see this a lot, right, there's strength in numbers, where you see Utah officials, whether it's the governor or the state auditor, you know, banding together with people from other states to present a big united front to the President, and it's kind of hard to say no to a ton of governors throughout the country that you know you're in charge of.

And I think the letter is interesting, and also just the commentary that we've gotten from Utah elected officials in general, particularly at the federal level, is that, you know, they condemn the treatment and some of those really awful images that Lindsay was talking about at the border, the treatment of Haitian immigrants, but at the same time they say that there's not enough enforcement on the borders.

So, kind of a question for me is, you know, which one is it?

Jason: Yeah, so Matt, it's not just our local elected officials, but our own, in our last 30 seconds or so, our own Senator Mitt Romney is weighing in quite considerably, calling this a monumental disaster.

Matt: There's misinformation that has led some of these migrants to try to get across the border, believing that there's a policy change that has shifted, and what Mitt Romney is arguing to the Biden administration is, you need to be--have a clear and consistent message so people aren't trying to cross the border thinking they're going to get in.

He blames the Biden administration for incentivizing this to happen, and there has been a huge increase in the number of people who have tried to get across the border this year.

Jason: We'll watch this one closely.

Thank you all for your great insights this evening, much appreciated.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

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

Thank you for being with us, see you next week.

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