Utah’s GOP election head purged noncitizens from voter rolls, but the Trump team didn’t want to hear how few she found

Utah has already combed its voter rolls for any noncitizens registered to vote and found it to be a non-issue, but that’s not what the Trump administration and congressional Republicans want to hear, the state’s Republican elections chief said.

“I learned a long time ago that, like they don’t want to know that we’re doing things OK,” Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the state’s top election official, told Utah News Dispatch and other local media outlets in a recent interview. “They don’t want to know that things are going well, because it goes against a narrative that is being pounded relentlessly of mass fraud or ineligible people voting.”

Utah’s yearlong review discovered an infinitesimal 27 confirmed noncitizens out of more than 2 million registered voters. Of those 27 noncitizens on the rolls, only 13 of them had cast a ballot since 2018.

The findings severely undercut President Donald Trump’s push for a sweeping anti-voting measure, the so-called “Save America Act,” which would require documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote along with other ID restrictions. Trump claims the bill is necessary to combat rampant fraud, despite providing no evidence.

“And the facts just don’t support that narrative, and one would think that that would be relief to people,” Henderson added. “‘Oh, phew. OK, we thought there was this problem, but now we see that there isn’t this problem.’ Well, that’s not what’s happening, unfortunately, with some people, and they’re just doubling down and creating problems where none exist, and that’s frustrating.”

The results of the audit also put Henderson at odds with Utah’s senior senator, Republican Mike Lee, who is sponsoring the SAVE Act. The Senate went into recess until after the midterms without passing the bill.

“I would also be in favor of some sort of federal ID requirement. Most states have these ID requirements. Utah certainly does, or even documented proof of citizenship,” Henderson said. 

But she added a major caveat: “If there is enough leeway for people to actually get their documents — having something like the SAVE Act that’s implemented effective immediately, the purpose of that is just to disenfranchise people, and that’s crappy. That should not happen. That’s despicable.”

When asked if she’s spoken with Lee amid his Save America Act push, Henderson replied: “The only time I hear about Sen. Lee is when he tweets about me.” Lee often posts about Henderson online, suggesting she’s not taking election security seriously and saying she should cooperate with the administration’s demands.

Lee’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Henderson’s drawn the ire of many of her fellow Republicans this past year over her vocal criticism of Republican-led efforts to restrict voting.

Overseeing elections in a universal vote-by-mail state, Henderson slammed the president’s executive order that sought to have the U.S. Postal Service take unprecedented control over the mail ballot process. She also refused to turn over sensitive voter data to the Department of Justice, resulting in the agency suing Utah for the records and launching an investigation into Henderson.

“Politics should not be messing around with the rules of the game to benefit one side or another,” Henderson told the Utah News Dispatch and other Utah outlets. “That should never happen, and that gamesmanship keeps me up at night.”