Colby Jenkins’ Utah Supreme Court arguments claim USPS ‘interference’ in GOP Primary

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court heard arguments over late-postmarked ballots in Utah’s 2nd Congressional District Republican Primary on Friday.

The arguments hinged on whether Utah’s postmark deadline law was unconstitutional because of how it relinquishes control of ballots to the United States Post Office. Colby Jenkins’s team argued that violates a voter’s rights.

“No power, civil or military, shall interfere to prevent the free exercise of suffrage,” said A.J. Ferate, Jenkins’ lawyer, reading from Utah’s Constitution. “By statute, Utah has allowed by reliance on the Postal Service’s mail delivery practices similar interference in the state’s elections.”

But state lawyers, and sometimes the justices, probed further into why the postmark deadline was not the voter’s responsibility.

“That responsibility lies with the voter, not with the Postal Service,” said the state’s Assistant Solicitor General, Sarah Goldberg. “And to that end, we have counties telling voters, get your ballots in early to make sure they are postmarked by the deadline.”

Ferate said that if deadline laws were like those in other states, where they require a specific time a ballot must be turned in, then he said it would be the voter’s responsibility.

“But Utah has this instance in place that actually restricts that voter’s ability to actually have that clear dictate,” Ferate said. “It says the post office, another civil authority that is not involved, actually has a responsibility that is out of the control of that voter.”

Goldberg also challenged Ferate’s claim that it violates Utahns’ equal voting rights, citing other options voters have for turning in ballots, like drop boxes and in-person voting, which she said is required by law in every Utah city.

Ferate said rural voters have less access to those things because of how spread out their counties are.

Jenkins’ camp is challenging a total of 1,171 ballots, which he said were marked late across several southern Utah counties. Still, Washington County attested to only knowing of 244 ballots that went through the Las Vegas USPS sorting center and were marked late.

The justices questioned Ferate on whether they should only count the Vegas-processed ballots and how they would even determine how many there were.

“Unfortunately, that would be the situation,” Ferate said. “We weren’t actually given access to the information that was put in that brief until it was filed yesterday. We didn’t know that that was the fact. If we had, we probably would have challenged the additional ballots.”

Pending any appeals, this suit may be the last avenue Jenkins has to change his primary loss. After the hearing, he said he would accept the results if the justices did not rule in his favor.

“We’re certainly grateful that we’ve tried to exhaust every legal means for us to go. But yes, that that’s how our nation operates is under rule,” Jenkins said.

The justices took the arguments under advisement, it’s unclear when they might rule.