This is an old news article from a previous year. The results in this article are from Garfield County’s 2022 midterm elections. To read the election results from 2023, go to 2023 General Election Results.
Election night is a tense time for all involved. Those counting the ballots spend long hours of hard work, candidates are exhausted from months of campaigning and voters just want to know the results.
The results of the Garfield County elections are as follows:
| U.S. Senate Evan McMullin: 500 James Arthur Hansen: 31 Mike Lee: 1,729 Tommy Williams: 35 | Garfield County Commission Seat A Leland Pollock: 1,764 Mack Oetting: 480 |
| U.S. House District 2 Nick Mitchell: 356 Jay McFarland: 33 Chris Stewart: 1,858 | Garfield County Commission Seat B David Tebbs: 1,917 |
| State Treasurer Marlo M. Oaks: 1,852 Thomas Alan Horne: 91 Warren T. Rogers: 90 Joseph Geddes Buchman: 93 | Garfield County Clerk/Auditor Camille Moore: 1,965 |
| State House District 69 Phil Lyman: 1,751 Davina Smith: 516 | Garfield County Attorney Barry Huntington: 1,892 |
| Garfield County Sheriff James D. Perkins: 1,032 Eric Houston: 1,226 |
Garfield County School Board Candidates had no opposition. April Lefevre and Jared Partick Brems were elected and will serve on the School Board.
The Constitutional Amendment A to give the State Legislature broader spending power failed in Garfield County by a vote of 1,165 against and 830 for. Results on a state level are not final yet.
On a state level Evan McMullin conceded the election to Mike Lee by 11 p.m. and many in our county breathed a sigh of relief. Other state results were similar to Garfield County with those getting the votes in our county winning on a state level.
Final results will be posted online as soon as they are available.
Modern Technology Improves Counting Methods
Years ago when ballots were counted by hand we had three people at a table: one reading and two marking dashes in boxes and calling out “five!” every time they counted five votes for a candidate, just to be sure that the count was correct.
Counting was slow and judges of elections didn’t get home until after midnight on a good year. Now with modern machinery and many hands organizing things it is a much faster process.
This year things were handled in Garfield County in an efficient manner with two voting machines doing the actual counting and eight people preparing the ballots for counting. The voter signatures were verified when the ballots were received.
On election night one person on each side of a table sliced open a ballot. They handed it off to the next person who took the ballot out of the envelope. This person handed it off to the next person and the third person unfolded the ballot and put it in a pile. The fourth person on each side of the table picked up the pile of ballots and fed them into the machine. The machine actually read the ballots and kept count.
This whole process went quite quickly and efficiently even though the ballots were handled several times, the preparation made counting faster. Other safeguards were put in place with onlookers helping to be sure that each ballot was counted correctly.
Our county workers did an outstanding job and had the results ready to send to the Lieutenant Governor’s office by 9 p.m.
That is a record time and much better than the old days of hand counting. Thanks to modern technology and efficient work, no one had to stay up all night counting ballots.
–The Byway
Click the links to see more election night results for Wayne County and Piute County elections.