Is It Possible To Get A Do-Over If You Already Voted For Klobuchar Or Buttigieg?
Mar 3, 2020, 8:59 AM | Updated: 8:59 am
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – If you already voted for someone who’s no longer in the race, do you get to vote again?
In Utah, the answer may not be the one early voters want to hear.
At least 333,000 residents had cast mailed in their ballots for the primary election in Utah before Super Tuesday.
The Deseret News reports that some of those voters are asking for a do-over after their candidates dropped out of the race.
Pete Buttigieg, who polled in third place among Democratic primary voters, according to a Deseret News / Hinckley Institute of Politics poll, announced he was suspending his campaign just days before Super Tuesday. Sen. Amy Klobuchar held a rally in Salt Lake City on Monday and hours later announced she, too, was stepping away from the presidential race.
So what are early voters to do if the candidate they chose is no longer in the race?
Some states, like Michigan, allow voters who used an absentee ballot to start over if their candidate dropped out. Unfortunately, Utah doesn’t allow a redo for ballots already mailed in.
“Unfortunately, there is no way you can retrieve that ballot,” Salt Lake County Clerk Sherri Swensen told Deseret News. “It’s against the law to vote twice.”
That doesn’t mean the votes will go uncounted, though. Since those candidates are still officially on the Utah ballot, then they still qualify for delegates. So if none of the remaining candidates get a majority of delegates, then a candidate who’s dropped out could become a free agent in a brokered convention, according to Utah Democratic Party officials.
Read more about how a brokered convention works at Deseret.com.