Jenkins announced on X that his campaign formally requested the recount, given the 214-vote margin separating him and Maloy was within the required range for a recount under Utah law. The lieutenant governor’s office confirmed to Utah News Dispatch on Monday that it received Jenkins’ request.
Official election results showed Jenkins trailed Maloy by just a fraction of a percentage point — 0.2% — with 49.9% to Maloy’s 50.1%, or 53,534 to 53,748 votes.
“Five weeks ago on election night, we were down nearly 2,000 votes, and now here we sit at 214,” Jenkins told Utah News Dispatch on Monday during a phone interview, noting that as more ballots trickled in leading up to the county canvass, he continued to close the gap on Maloy until the margin hit recount territory.
For a losing candidate to be able to call a recount, Utah law requires a margin of equal to or less than 0.25% of the total number of votes cast. According to official election results, 107,282 ballots were cast and counted in the 2nd Congressional District race, putting the required recount margin at about 268 votes. Maloy’s slim 214-vote lead positions the race well within recount range.
That 214-vote margin is the same as three weeks ago, when county officials across the state canvassed and certified their election results.
That day, Maloy declared victory. “214 votes is pretty close, but it’s about 213 more votes than you need to win,” she said. Though she acknowledged Jenkins was likely to call a recount, she said she didn’t expect “that a recount will change the outcome.”
Jenkins, at the time, said he planned to call a recount and responded with this statement: “I’ve been in a lot of battles in my life, victory isn’t something you declare. You win it, or you don’t. Let Celeste declare victory, and we will win it.”
On Monday after Jenkins officially called the recount, Maloy issued a video statement saying it came as no surprise, and “my team is prepared for this.”
“I want to make sure that every Utah voter has a high level of confidence in our election system, the integrity of our elections, and that their votes will be counted,” she said. “So we’re going to watch this play out.”
She added she has a “really high level of confidence in our county clerks and their staff. They do a really great job verifying and checking all the ballots.”
“So we’ll watch this recount play out,” she said, “but I’m confident that the final result will be the same.”
Jenkins said he, too, has “confidence in our election,” but he again pointed to concerns his campaign has raised about ballots that have been disqualified because they missed the postmarking deadline under Utah law, which mandates vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked no later than the day before Election Day.
Jenkins’ campaign estimates about 1,300 ballots across multiple counties, but concentrated in southern Utah counties where he had significant support like Iron and Washington, were disqualified because they missed the postmarking deadline, even though Jenkins said he’s heard from multiple families — “entire households — that said they put their ballots in the mail well before the June 24 deadline.
“There are hundreds of voters whose votes were disqualified because of what we call the ‘Vegas cancellation,’” Jenkins said, referring to some ZIP codes in southern Utah where mail is processed in Las Vegas before being sent back to county clerks.
The issue especially stirred frustrations in Iron County, where one commissioner voted against certifying the election. The other commissioners ultimately voted 2-1 to certify, but not without heartburn over nearly 500 vote-by-mail ballots that were not postmarked on time and disqualified. Many of those, county officials worried, should have been counted but weren’t due to mail being routed through Las Vegas.
Though Jenkins’ campaign officials previously floated the possibility of addressing the postmarking issue through a recount, Jenkins told Utah News Dispatch on Monday that they anticipate attempting to remedy the issue through a separate legal challenge — by contesting the election through a petition filed with the Utah Supreme Court.
Jenkins said it’s likely that filing to officially contest the election will come Tuesday. He has until the end of the day on Aug. 1, or 10 days from the election certification on July 22, according to the lieutenant governor’s office.
To read the full story visit UtahNewsDispatch.com.
