SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah judge on Friday rejected a bid by Republican U.S. Rep. Mia Love to halt vote counting in a Democratic-leaning county that’s key to the outcome of a tight House race.
Judge James Gardner made the decision a day after a court hearing on the lawsuit filed Wednesday by Love, who is trailing Democratic challenger Ben McAdams. He’s leading by about 1,000 votes, with more results expected to be released later in the day.
The Love campaign argued it must have a path to challenge voter signatures on mail-in ballots if they didn’t seem to match those on file in Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County.
But the county says there’s no law giving candidates that right and allowing the challenge could mean violating voters’ private ballots in a state where voting is done primarily by mail.
Gardner said in his written ruling that Love’s campaign failed to show that any law or statute allowed it to intervene in the vote counting or that he should halt the count.
“Instead the Love parties effectively ask the court to create expansive new rights for campaign involvement in ballot processing,” Gardner wrote.
He added, “Neither a poll watcher nor a candidate enjoys a statutory right to challenge, override or redo the type of work by an election official at issue in this case.”
The judge criticized the Love campaign for waiting so long to bring the lawsuit, saying it “effectively destroyed” his ability to grant the relief the campaign wanted. He suggested Love ask the Legislature if she wants new rights for candidates created in state law.
An attorney for the Love campaign, Robert Harrington, said it would “continue to closely observe the integrity of this election process.”
“Although we disagree with the outcome, we appreciate the court’s attention to the issues raised in our petition,” Harrington said in statement.
McAdams’ campaign manager, Andrew Roberts, praised the decision, saying, “We are happy to see that no 4th District voters will be disenfranchised.”
McAdams is now the mayor of Salt Lake County, where 85 percent of voters in the district live in the suburbs of the state’s capital. Love’s stronghold is in Republican-leaning Utah County.
Her campaign said after filing the lawsuit that it was “not accusing anyone of anything” but claimed poll monitors had seen a few instances of voter signatures on ballots accepted by election workers that appeared not to match those on file. Her attorneys argued they needed a process to formally challenge those ballots under voter eligibility rules and have them set aside until they could be reconciled.
County Clerk Sherrie Swenson, a Democrat, said Love’s campaign staff was granted access to observe the tallies but is not allowed to participate in the signature verification process.
McAdams gained the edge on Election Day when he had a lead of an approximately 3 percentage points, though the outcome was too close to call. Shortly afterward, President Donald Trump called out Love by name in a news conference where he bashed some fellow Republicans, saying she and others lost because they didn’t fully embrace him. He made the comments despite doubt about the outcome of the Utah vote.
Love, who became the first black Republican woman elected to Congress in 2014, had distanced herself from Trump’s hardline stance on issues like immigration.
McAdams, meanwhile, has positioned himself as a solid moderate who could work with the president.
In the week since the election, Love has cut into McAdams’ lead and is now nearing the 0.25 percentage point threshold where candidates can request a recount in Utah.
It’s not the first lawsuit the Salt Lake County clerk’s office has faced from Republicans this election cycle. A few days before the vote, two GOP candidates accused Swenson of failing to send thousands of ballots to voters in a timely manner, but the case was dismissed.
A similar lawsuit, meanwhile, was filed this week by a Republican who lost a bid for a House seat in New Mexico. A judge has scheduled a hearing Friday in that case.
