Resolution on a Return to Excellence in Voting

 RESOLUTION ON A RETURN TO EXCELLENCE IN VOTING

Sponsored by Casey Gale
Adopted by the State Central Committee, January 27, 2024

WHEREAS, To present a formal Resolution from the Utah Republican Party State Central Committee for declared opposition to voting manipulation schemes and to return to the functional and historic balloting and polling experience that Utahns understand, appreciate, and love; and

WHEREAS, The Utah Republican Party Platform is to “work to expose and stop corruption”, this includes our elections processes; and

WHEREAS, The Republican National Committee unanimously passed a RESOLUTION URGING A “RETURN TO EXCELLENCE” IN AMERICAN VOTING AND ELECTIONS during the RNC Summer 2023 Meeting; and

WHEREAS, The Republican Party of Texas has passed a similar Return-to-Excellence resolution; and

WHEREAS, Ensuring the integrity of our voting and election administration is critical and foundational to maintaining a civil and decent society decentralized from a federal government as the Founders intended; and

WHEREAS, Utahns and all Americans expect accurate and swift determinations as it pertains to elections and the administration of elections; and

WHEREAS, Elections have been under assault from those on the Left as they attempt to implement schemes and intentionally inject chaotic administrative changes that have drastically changed how elections are conducted in hundreds of the most populous counties and regions across the nation; and

WHEREAS, Election officials are obligated to apply polling place access equitably in Utah, and should not eliminate polling places in order and to move to “vote center” models that make polling place access more difficult in more conservative areas; and

WHEREAS, The Laws of the United States, and the laws of the State of Utah ensure only United States citizens, and residents of the State of Utah should decide our elections; and

WHEREAS, Republican officials are explicitly asking for decisive direction and support from the state Republican apparatus and elected Republican leadership; and

WHEREAS, The grassroots activists of the Republican Party Nationally, and locally have discovered and made it abundantly clear that there are recognized problems with electronic election procedures and intentional complications of instituted systems that complicate, belabor, and slow down our election processes; and

WHEREAS, Election experts agree that the most resilient voting systems use paper ballots, either marked by hand or with an assistive device, and are verified by the voter before any means of tabulation; and

WHEREAS, County Clerks in Utah are actively being criminally prosecuted for the destruction of ballots; and

WHEREAS, The Republican National Committee has unanimously opposed complicated election schemes like Ranked Choice Voting that is a clear example of the chaos being pushed on our states and territories; and

WHEREAS, Registered Republicans throughout Utah are relying on the leadership of the Utah Republican Party to restore public trust in our elections;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC boldly opposes means of voting that do not have the proper safeguards in place and are exclusively electronic and calls on every county and state to use as the default ballot systems, which are fully auditable, namely hand-marked, voter-verified paper ballots to ensure every voter is memorialized by a paper record; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC calls on our Lt Governor to implement anticounterfeit ballot printing, tracing and verification procedures; and 

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC calls our Party Leadership, Conventions Chair, and County parties from all 29 Utah Counties to utilize sequentially numbered paper ballots in our elections; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC calls our Party Leadership, Conventions Chair, and County parties from all 29 Utah Counties to discontinue complicated ranked choice or electronic voting methods; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC supports the rights of counties and cities that are willing and able to competently and efficiently implement voting procedures that do not require the use of machines and those that implement hand counting procedures that are fully auditable; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party calls for the elimination of funding by non-governmental organizations, whether directly or indirectly, for all activities related to our elections; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC calls on state legislatures, county, and municipal governments to pass laws and municipal codes and rules that allow for full transparent hand-counting procedures that are planned, timely and fully observable by the public and the registered parties for geographically defined audits and recounts; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC calls on all Republican officeholders to defend the historic practice of geographically-defined and assigned precinct, ward and localized polling places for means of balloting and tabulating paper ballots by geographic unit; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC stands firmly behind voter identification laws and calls on state legislators to pass a law to ensure every voter is a legal citizen of the United States, and verified to be the actual voter regardless of method in which they vote at the time of voting, casting, or delivering a ballot; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party calls on the State Legislature, the Speaker of the House, the Senate President, and the Governor to deliver legislation that has independent third party audits of our elections; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC  hereby opposes any and all efforts for Utah to unreasonably expand time periods for early or vote-by-mail that makes ballot counting procedures intentionally unmanageable or incapable to complete expeditiously following the conclusion of an election on election day; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC calls for the elimination and restriction of temporary or ‘pop-up’ voting locations, drop boxes, and any other voting center that are not fairly defined and bound to a designated geographic territory, and where voting locations exist, namely by precinct, so that voting is accessible equitably by legal precinct, ward or defined geographic unit in order to provide impartial access for all voters; and

RESOLVED, The Utah Republican Party SCC calls for a necessary “return to excellence” or, a return to the simple and proven methods of precinct, ward or geographically-defined localized voting with auditable balloting procedures using paper ballots, in fair, reasonable limited time periods, using proper identification to strengthen voter confidence and to ensure that American election procedures can be a fair and open process for all to participate.

CO-SPONSORS

Gunnar Thordersen, Wendy Hart, Alexia Preston, Bob McEntee, Blair Brandenburg, Jennifer Garner, Cathy Richardson, Kim Coleman, Kevin Richardson, Carolyn Phippen, Cristy Henshaw, Sheila Stubbs Knight, Marjorie Haun, Thomas Young, Olivia Dawn, Neil Sebring, Christina Boggess, Becky Hope, Blaine Nay, Whit Cook, Connie Peterson, Chad Saunders, Charles Dan Spencer, Cheryle Allen, Carlos Moreno, Lynn Jackson, Brandon Beckham, Natalie Levi, Teena Horlacher, Jason Hackett, David Pyne

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