By Bill Keshlear
San Juan County's elections administrator should be scrupulously neutral.
LET ME REPEAT.
San Juan County's elections administrator should be scrupulously neutral.
In distributing this letter to the editor at early voting locations, John David Nielson, county clerk, was not scrupulously neutral. It was written by Blanding Mayor Joe B. Lyman, one of the sponsors of a ballot question up for a countywide vote on November 5, as a rebuttal to misinformation about the election from chair of the county commission, Kenneth Maryboy. The letter appeared in the San Juan Record.
The Utah ACLU performed a public service in raising objections about possible illegal electioneering:
“The presence of such material at a polling location raises serious questions about electioneering, defined as a deliberate attempt inside or nearby a polling location to influence voters to vote for a particular candidate or issue.”
The Salt Lake Tribune's writer Zak Podmore performed a "watchdog" role. He and his editor, Dan Harrie, should be congratulated.
Nielson immediately stopped distributing the "educational" letter.
Elections should be considered sacrosanct, beyond partisan maneuvering ... for everyone.
A video still, below, shows Tara Benally, field director of a nonprofit called Rural Utah Project, with a San Juan County voter a few feet from the entrance of the polling place at Montezuma Creek, Utah, during the last year’s Democratic primary. Utah election laws prohibit “electioneering” closer than 150 feet from a polling place.
RUP, a partisan operation thinly disguised as a voter registration group, was in effect a campaign organization working to elect Maryboy and Grayeyes. According to its website, RUP's work “paved the way for the landmark election of Willie Grayeyes and Kenneth Maryboy.”
The caption above another photo on the organization’s Facebook page says field director (Benally) “works to elect the first majority-Navajo majority county commission in San Juan County’s history” and depicts Grayeyes attaching a campaign sign to a fence post.
RUP is run by the former political director of the Utah Democratic Party, TJ Ellerbeck, who had provided technical expertise to the state Democratic Party as political director until party chair Peter Corroon left a couple of years ago. Last year's successful efforts on behalf of Grayeyes and Maryboy were in part funded by a political action committee, Utah American Dream PAC, set up by Ellerbeck. Prominent Salt Lake City Democrats contributed to the PAC.
A second photo shows a representative of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission, a Navajo government agency, apparently blocking the attempt of a poll watcher to document what several observers believe was Benally's illegal electioneering – defined in Utah election law as “any oral, printed, or written attempt to persuade persons to refrain from voting or to vote for or vote against any candidate or issue.”
In
addition, Utah election law prohibits within 150 feet of a polling
place circulation of cards or handbills of any kind; solicitation of
signatures to any kind of petition; or engaging in any practice that
interferes with the freedom of voters to vote or disrupts the
administration of the polling place.
Illegal electioneering is a class A misdemeanor.