This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
In disturbing remarks made at a recent campaign visit, Lt. Governor of Utah Spencer Cox alleged voting improprieties by Latter-day Saint women, reportedly suggesting that these women are a bigger threat to Utah’s elections than foreign influences. Spencer Cox is front-runner for Utah’s 2020 governor election.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Cox found Latter-day Saint women to be a greater threat to fair elections: “…in the few cases that do crop up in the Beehive State, he said, the culprits typically aren’t shadowy characters trying to skew election outcomes — they’re more often Latter-day Saint mothers whose kids are away on religious missions.” Mothers are out to skew elections? Thus the basis for The Salt Lake Tribune’s appallingly misogynist headline: “Utah election fraud problem is overstepping moms of Latter-day Saint missionaries more than foreign meddlers.”
Scheming ‘Mormon’ Mothers? – Why would local mothers be “trying to skew election outcomes”? Cox says (per SLTrib) they are filling out their children’s ballots: “They think, ‘Oh, I’ll just fill it out for him, and I’ll sign it and send it back in.” Voters who live overseas are supposed to have their ballots forwarded to their overseas address, and voters are not supposed to have anyone fill out their ballot unless that person is legally allowed to do so. Someone living out of state may be tempted to have their parents write down their vote for them and send it in, or just not be aware of the proper procedure. There is also electronic voting that makes the whole thing a lot quicker. People living out of state can still vote, but they need to follow the correct procedure.
Assuming Women Are To Blame
How do Utah’s political leaders know it is mothers filling in the ballots? Why blame women? According to elections director of Utah County Rozan Mitchell (Republican), they assume who filled it in based on what the signature looks like. “Sometimes, well-meaning missionary moms rat themselves out in situations like that,” she said, per SLTrib. “You say, ‘I’m pretty sure that Nathan’s signature is not that fancy and loopy,'” “And you … look at other signatures of voters registered at that address and you go, ‘That signature matches his mother’s to a tee.’”
So basically they are assuming it’s women doing it because the handwriting is loopy and neat? That’s sure what it sounds like. But neither Mitchell, Cox, or the SLTrib showed any actual evidence that women are to blame. No statistics. No examples. Just claims of some loopy handwriting.
To their modicum of credit, SLTrib did provided a little context about voting irregularities. Salt Lake county “has also on occasion dealt with parents who have sent in a ballot on behalf of children away on missions or at college.” SLTrib claims there were 135 ballots in 2018 in which “the ballot signature looked inconsistent with the one on file,” but no statistics on who provided the signature or why, or even if it turned out to be a legitimate discrepancy. Sometimes people’s signatures just look different. Salt Lake County’s clerk also points out that “household members accidentally mix up their ballots. Other times, spouses will sign each other’s envelopes,” per SLTrib, so it’s not necessarily women out trying to skew elections, and it’s not necessarily parents of missionaries. SLTrib quotes the associate director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Utah: “There is this sort of scary specter of voter fraud, but then the data shows it is very, very low,” “And often … it turns out to be something honestly more bureaucratic and innocent.”
So why did Spencer Cox say Latter-day Saint mothers are out trying to skew election outcomes?
Incorrectly Labeled ‘Election Fraud’ – According to far-left ThinkProgress, it is false to equate voter fraud with election fraud: “Election fraud is the act of infiltrating and disrupting the normal democratic process of voting, usually with the expressed intention of affecting the results. If your objective is to commit election fraud, you aren’t focused on individual votes but entire swaths of voters. Think hacking a digital voting machine and manipulating the data.” Is that what Latter-day Saint women are doing? Are they plotting in their Relief Society meetings on Sunday to affect the results of Utah’s elections with fraudulent means? Come on. “Voter fraud, on the other hand, is a comparatively small-scale crime. As the name suggests, it is a crime committed by one voter who intentionally tries to cast a ballot in an election he or she is not legally permitted to vote in,” says ThinkProgress. But there is yet a third category: “Rarer still is voter impersonation.” That’s what this is, if Cox’s allegations are true. It is voter impersonation.
So according to ThinkProgress here, The Salt Lake Tribune should not be calling this election fraud or voter fraud. And if it turns out to be voter impersonation, it’s not like they were trying to mark a vote that wasn’t the voter’s intention. They were just to lazy to forward the mail, or didn’t know that’s what they were supposed to do. It would be a simple procedural error.
The Salt Lake Tribune’s deceptive and sensational language calling this “election fraud” inspires the kind of hatred we are seeing from Antimormons right now. “Mormon moms are committing election fraud by the thousands,” announced Kate Kelly, who allegedly is a feminist fighting for women’s rights.
Misogyny From Salt Lake Tribune
The opinion writer for Salt Lake Tribune stepped up the hateful rhetoric against women and Latter-day Saints. To me it sounds like he’s saying the women are not smart enough to know how to handle voting by mail:
“When voter fraud meets serving God It recently came to light that Mormon moms have been casting ballots on behalf of their offspring away on church missions. It’s the vote-by-mail thing tripping them up… When I was in Uruguay, I had no idea what was happening back home until weeks after it happened… So, not only would I have been unable to vote, I also wouldn’t have bothered. My attention was focused on doors and not being set upon by leeches, dysentery, mosquitoes, communists and horrible missionary companions. I can’t even conceive of the distractions that instant media would have caused back then. Who would have had the time to worry about an election 5,000 miles and months away?… Thanks to technology, missionaries soon will be able to vote via their cellphones. I can’t think of a better way to drive away hope for the world than by following politics that closely.”
Robert Kirby in The Salt Lake Tribune
Robert Kirby was briefly suspended last year after he reportedly made sexual comments and “belittled and embarrassed” women at a Latter-day Saint conference. This is who The Salt Lake Tribune still has writing about Latter-day Saint women.
Discouraging Missionaries From Voting
Why are Robert Kirby and The Salt Lake Tribune trying to discourage missionaries from voting? Why are they telling missionaries that it is too difficult or distracting? I’ll let you decide.
But that appears to be the message from Spencer Cox as well, and that is much more disturbing. We all know The Salt Lake Tribune hates Latter-day Saints, but this is not something we would want to hear from the man likely to be Utah’s governor in 2020! SLTrib reported: “But it’s only too easy for a parent to get hold of a child’s ballot now that Utah has embraced voting by mail, said Cox, whose office is responsible for supervising state elections.” Is Utah’s new embrace of voting by mail a problem? Why is he criticizing it? Shouldn’t Spencer Cox think it’s great that missionaries now have the opportunity to have their vote rightfully counted and their voices heard? Why does this worry him? “We’re finding over the years that these 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds are a lot more politically active than they were 20 years ago,” said Rozan Mitchell per SLTrib, “and they really want to vote.” Is this a bad thing or a good thing? Why are they declaring this in the context of a negative news article?
Well, Spenser Cox ought to know all about impropriety, as Spencer Cox filled in after the previous Lt. Gov. resigned over campaign finance violations. That’s how he got where he is. It wasn’t the vote of the people. And how would faithful Latter-day Saint missionaries feel about him? Cox may have “Republican” by his name, but he is fiercely Anti-Trump and pro-illegal immigration. Does he fear missionaries having the right to vote? This is a question that definitely needs to be asked, but I doubt journalists will.
News Media Attacks On Women – Misogyny, bigotry, and bullying of Latter-day Saint women is acceptable and regularly practiced by the mainstream media. This is just the latest example, and Utah’s political leaders apparently know how the game is played. Since the earliest days of the church when Latter-day Saint women were illegally arrested and forced to testify against their polygamous husbands, moral crusades played out in popular culture treat our women as the problem not the victim.
Here is NBC News and Associated Press giggling over a calendar of “Mormon moms” in sexy clothing and seductive poses. “Calendar pokes fun at Mormon mom stereotype,” reads the headline, and the reader is treated to photos of women in skimpy lingerie and costumes. It turns “Mormon moms” into sexual fetish objects, yet it remains on NBC News.com. No complaints from champions of women’s rights.
It’s just “poking fun” like the Book of Mormon musical is “just poking fun” with racist language and belittling themes toward our church.
It’s disgusting. It’s creepy. It needs to stop. But sexist articles like these from the Salt Lake Tribune indicate the problem is getting worse, not better.
Offensive ‘Mormon’ Label – Of course, throughout this The Salty Tribune perpetuates the offensive label “Mormon” which we for over a year now have asked them to stop using. They just can’t help themselves. I have noticed that the only ones that have a problem with our name policy are those who relish in defining us in belittling and offensive ways. They just can’t attack women in our community as effectively unless they call them “Mormon moms.”
Hypocritical Attack On Latter-day Saints – On the other side of the pond, the mainstream media is complaining about laws that make it hard for college students to vote. NBC News complains that a New Hampshire law “will force permanent residents to comply with laws such as state motor vehicle registration. Students with cars, for example, would have to pay for a new, in-state driver’s license and register their cars in the state, a cost critics argue could deter the historically Democratic voting bloc from the ballot box.” So when it is non-Latter-day Saint college students–a voting base that is statistically far leftwing–the media complains that they have to keep their car registered with the DMV. But when it comes to Latter-day Saints of the same age, suddenly the media whips up a baseless rumor that they are committing election fraud?