Democrat Megan McKenna maintained a strong lead over Republican Ari Ioannides in the first days after the general election, but the margin in the race for Summit County Council Seat C shrunk to about 1% as of Wednesday.
Preliminary results released by the Summit County Clerk’s Office midweek showed 278 votes separated the candidates with early in-person votes and those cast on Election Day now processed.
Clerk Eve Furse anticipated the final batch of results could be released late Friday or Saturday afternoon.
“I expect that’s the last one unless we get in a flood of ballots. We were waiting on a couple of things equipment-wise that we just need to tie up … but we’re really hopeful to be able to put it out,” she said.
McKenna was on track to take Seat C with a more than 5% lead last week and strong support from the Park City and Snyderville Basin areas. She received 12,163 votes, or 50.58% as of Wednesday.
However, Ioannides was the standout candidate among eastern Summit County voters — many of whom are Republican and lean toward in-person voting. He earned 11,885 votes, or 49.42%, with the latest count.
Furse said the Clerk’s Office has just under 700 ballots left to process. That means Ioannides could still gain the ground needed to win.
The Clerk’s Office is committed to having all votes processed by the canvass on Nov. 19. That’s when the results would become official.
Under Utah law, a recount is mandatory if the margin of victory is less than or equal to 0.25% of the total votes cast. Every single vote — more than 25,000 ballots — would have to be recounted under that scenario.
“We would rerun all the ballots and recount them to make sure no errors were made. We check everything that we can check and verify to make sure that it all comes out right,” Furse said.
Clerk’s Office staff began counting mail-in or drop-box ballots as they started arriving on Oct. 22. Early in-person voting started on Oct. 31, and ballot processing continued.
“Usually we’re able to catch up before Election Day and then we can maybe get early [in-person] votes in … but we weren’t able to get them because we had such a lag from what was received before early voting,” Furse explained.
The equipment used to count votes has additional signature requirements for mail-in and drop-box ballots compared to those cast in person, so it must be reprogrammed before the Clerk’s Office switches over. The switch happened on Wednesday.
Furse said they prioritized counting ballots where signatures had to match to give those voters as much time as possible to cure their vote if there was an issue. The Clerk’s Office is still waiting to verify some of those ballots as well as those from overseas voters.
Signature affidavits must be returned to the Clerk’s Office by 5 p.m. on Monday for the ballot to be counted. They can be sent via mail or dropped off in person. However, Furse recommended taking a photo of it and emailing it to [email protected].
McKenna never claimed victory in the Seat C election, instead wanting to wait until the Clerk’s Office finished counting ballots.
“I appreciate everyone’s support and encouragement as we await final vote counts. It’s been an anxious 10 days after a long campaign but I know the Clerk’s Office is working diligently to ensure every vote is counted. It’s looking to be a close race and all we can do at this point is patiently allow the process to play out as voters intended,” McKenna said. “I feel good about the race we ran, knowing we gave it our best effort.”
Ioannides spoke to the Democrat on Friday afternoon to acknowledge that she was well ahead at that point. He recognized he had an uphill battle as a Republican in a predominantly Democrat county, though the new votes counted indicate he still has a chance.
“Win or lose, I am grateful for the support, energy, and dedication that has driven this effort from the start,” Ioannides said.
One of the things that made the 2024 election both unique, and challenging, in Summit County was the large number of write-in votes.
Phil Lyman garnered a lot of write-in support with almost 2,000 residents writing him in for governor. That meant two sets of eyes had to look at the ballot and confirm who the person voted for.
That added a lot of time for staff and was a factor in why it took longer to count the votes in the general election.