Celeste Maloy Declared Winner of Congressional Primary Election

After over a month of deliberation and an official recount, it appears Incumbent Celeste Maloy will officially move onto the November election for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District. 

Colby Jenkins’ campaign called for the recount after the official results showed he was behind the congressman by 214 votes, which was close enough for a recount to happen. 

After a few error messages from some of the counties, the results of the recount still showed Maloy ahead of Jenkins by 176 votes.  

This means Maloy has been declared the winner unless some other unforeseen factors were to interfere. As for how we got here, let’s look back on the tumultuous June 25th primary election for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District. 

To do just that, here’s what our news partners at ABC4 Utah had to say about the election with an article written by Trevor Myers. 

Myers wrote, “Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson announced Monday that the recount for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District had officially been completed — and Congresswoman Celeste Maloy won, beating opponent Colby Jenkins by 176 votes. Jenkins formally requested a recount of the ballots on July 29. One week later, Lt. Gov. Henderson took to social media to announce Maloy had won the race, earning 53,777 votes over Jenkins’ 53,601 votes.” 

As for the error message that many counties were experiencing during the recount process, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson commented on the situation. 

Myers wrote, “Lt. Gov. Henderson said Monday that the error — which occurred in software that was being used for the “electronic adjudication of ballots” — did not affect other counties using the software. Henderson further explained that the malfunction was software-related and was not caused by human error.”