Activists outline alleged forged petition signatures, audits and withheld records at Davis County GOP meeting

At a packed Davis County Republican meeting at Faith Baptist Church, local activists and two candidates laid out a multi-stage account of alleged irregularities in 2024 candidate-petition signature verification and the state and AG-office responses, saying audits and court filings revealed flagged packets and prompted a limited reopening of discovery.

"Elections are the power to the people," said John Taylor, one of the presenters, urging attendees to tighten audits, clean voter rolls and press for transparency in how candidate packets and large projects such as proposed data centers are reviewed. Taylor also noted he is running and directed listeners to john4utah.com for more information.

Fred Hayes, who identified himself as a Box Elder County resident and longtime election-integrity activist, described long-running scrutiny of voter rolls and warned that SB54 restricts some access to mailed-ballot tracking and voter-roll data. "One thing that you can do and that we can all do ... is to request the moment the mail ballots go out," Hayes said, urging counties to maintain subscriptions that track mailed ballots to aid later review.

Michael Clara and attorney Natalie Clawson presented a detailed chronology and documentation they said resulted from dozens of public-records requests and appeals. They said the Davis County clerk was contracted to centralize statewide candidate-packet verification and that, according to records they obtained or cited, the attorney general's office opened offense reports in spring 2024 (identified in presentations as AG24121 and AG24170) after a signature-gathering company reported forged signatures.

Clara and Clawson said investigators later compared lists and found that some individuals whose signatures were rejected on one candidate's packet were recorded as accepted on another's. They described an audio-recorded September 3 meeting in which three AG investigators met with lieutenant-governor staff (identified in the meeting as Ryan Kelly/Calli and attorney Scott Cheney) and Davis County Clerk Brian McKenzie; presenters told attendees the investigators said McKenzie had counted forged signatures as valid and asked for flagged packets that were then retrieved from the county clerk's office.

Presenters also summarized three audits. A statistical audit by John Dooall released Sept. 3 estimated Cox might be hundreds of signatures short, while a later legislative-auditor report (released Oct. 15) likewise suggested shortfalls and identified a differing number of "spare" signatures. Presenters said a third, more granular audit—commissioned later and paid for by the state auditor—undertook a packet-by-packet review and generated lists of individuals the auditors concluded had submitted forged signatures; some of those findings led to criminal charges in separate counties, they said.

Clawson described repeated denials of GRAMA/records requests for signature packets and said the AG's office at times told requesters records "did not exist." The presenters said a Rule 60B motion, filed after a whistleblower produced an offense report, resulted in a judge granting limited relief and producing redacted offense reports and additional materials that are now subject to meet-and-confer negotiations about further disclosure.

The presenters repeatedly framed the dispute as a combination of procedural centralization, denied records access, conflicting audit counts and a partly redacted investigatory record that they say must be unsealed to fully assess whether statewide petition verification improperly counted forged signatures.

"When they find a forger in one county, that should cause us to look at any other packets gathered by that person," Clawson said. "We asked for those comparisons in June and were denied." Michael Clara urged attendees to watch his videos and the new book with source documents; he and other speakers described ongoing litigation to obtain full audio and unredacted offense reports.

The meeting closed with calls for volunteers, donations and voter education. Speakers urged attendees to support Phil Lyman (who they said has prioritized election integrity), to follow the activists' messaging on social media and to take part in poll-watching and records oversight going forward. Presenters emphasized they will continue litigating to obtain unredacted documents and full audio-video records.