Lyman will contest election results, as judge denies his request for voter information

Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, is pictured on the first day of the legislative session at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

Phil Lyman’s legal challenge to obtain voter information, part of his larger attempt to question the validity of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s candidacy, hit a wall last week. 

Still, the Trump-aligned candidate who lost by 37,525 votes says he will contest the state’s primary election results. 

On Friday, 3rd District Judge Stephen Nelson rejected Lyman’s request to inspect an unredacted list of GOP voters who offered their signature so Cox and two other candidates could get on the primary ballot.

Nelson, in the motion, wrote that Lyman’s attorneys “failed to meet the very high bar required” for such an immediate request. 

In a two-word statement on Monday, Lyman said the ruling was “completely expected.”

With the denial, Lyman’s lawsuit faces an uphill battle. During a court hearing on Thursday his attorney Douglass Farr indicated that if there are enough irregularities with Cox’s signatures, Lyman would try to get on the general election ballot. It’s unclear whether the lawsuit will be resolved by Sept. 6, the deadline for candidates to get their name on the general election ballot, which Farr previously called the “drop dead” date for the legal challenge. There are no upcoming hearings currently set for the case.

Lyman, an outgoing GOP state representative from Blanding, also announced on Friday that he will contest the primary results, writing in a statement on X that he has requested “election returns, including cast vote records, tabulator information, ballot images, tabulator tapes, and back up project databases, for all 29 Utah counties. No such information has been provided.” 

“We believe that there are votes recorded in the various counties that would not stand up to a verification process. We cannot perform the verification process without access to these very basic records,” said Lyman. 

Contesting the results will require a separate legal challenge. 

Lyman sued state election officials in Utah’s 3rd District Court earlier this month — his attorneys later asked the court for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order that would force officials to hand over the list of signers by Monday. 

Utah law allows candidates two avenues to get on the primary ballot. They can seek nomination by delegates at a party’s nominating convention, or they can collect enough signatures from eligible primary voters. Lyman beat Cox at convention, with some delegates going so far as to heckle the governor. But Cox collected enough signatures to get on the ballot. 

Lyman has repeatedly cast doubt on whether Cox got “valid” signatures, which could have disqualified his candidacy. 

Although Lyman has shown no evidence backing his claim, the lawsuit points to Gathering Inc., a company used by Cox, Derek Brown, Brad Wilson and Sen. Don Ipson, R-St. George, to get enough signatures to qualify for the primary election. Wilson, former Utah House Speaker, lost his Republican primary bid for U.S. Senate; Brown, the former chairman of the Utah Republican Party, won the GOP primary for attorney general; and Ipson won his race by 420 votes. 

The Washington County clerk later identified issues with the signatures gathered by Ipson, and Lyman claims there could be similar problems with the signatures gathered by Cox. 

“I do not believe Spencer Cox got 28,000 valid signatures,” Lyman told his followers last week after a State Records Committee meeting, where Lyman was denied access to Washington County records about the signatures. 

In the lawsuit filed on July 3, the Lyman campaign and its attorneys requested the personal identifying information of voters who signed the packets for Cox, Wilson and Brown, which includes their name, date of their signature, address, age, voter identification number, and whether their signature was verified. 

Lyman also asked the court for a chance to inspect “unredacted Signature Packets” so the campaign could “evaluate and, if necessary, challenge the signatures gathered by these competing campaigns” before Monday, the state’s canvassing deadline, which has now passed. 

During a court hearing on Thursday, Farr argued the campaign would suffer irreparable harm if the information was not released by the following Monday. 

“If the wrong candidate is included in the general election because he didn’t properly qualify, there would be irreparable harm,” said Farr. “The Republican Party chose Mr. Lyman and Ms. Clawson, but without the ability to inspect, there is no way for a candidate or the public to inspect or even challenge the candidates’ right to be on the ballot.” 

Nelson ultimately rejected Lyman’s request on several grounds — attorneys were “too speculative” when arguing that Lyman could suffer irreparable harm, he wrote, while their claim that withholding voter information would negatively impact transparency or integrity in the primary election process was “insufficiently vague.” 

The Lyman campaign and its attorneys didn’t “sufficiently” show why their request to obtain the voter information by the canvass deadline was necessary, nor did they suggest, through evidence or argument, that they could conduct a “meaningful and timely” investigation into the validity of the signature packets in that timeframe, Nelson added in the court filing. 

The fact that the primary election already happened “cuts against Plaintiffs’ arguments regarding irreparable harm,” Nelson wrote.

And, the request for the signature packets that got Wilson and Brown on the primary ballot “remains vague and non particular,” the ruling reads. 

Lyman’s lawsuit names Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, Ryan Cowley, the elections director who works under Henderson, and Mallory Underwood, office administrator for the lieutenant governor.

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