Utah court blocks election deniers' request for 2020 voting machine data

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A pair of Utah election deniers' attempts to obtain voting machine data from the 2020 election has once again been blocked by the courts.

Jen Orten and Sophie Anderson, who go by the online moniker "The Two Red Pills," attempted to use Utah's open-records law to obtain records from the 2020 election, including the "cast vote record," which is a log of when individual ballots were counted by machine and the ballot images, which are copies of each ballot loaded into the machines.

Orten and Anderson hoped to use that data to prove that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election. Election officials have said that the information is detailed enough to triangulate how some voters cast a ballot.

Those requests were denied because Utah law exempts "election materials" from open records requests. Additionally, Utah law mandates that election materials must be sealed after the results are certified and destroyed after 22 months.

In 2022, Orten and Anderson sued election officials in a trio of counties in an attempt to obtain the information. A Utah District Court judge dismissed that lawsuit and the duo appealed that dismissal. Last week, a three-judge panel for the Utah Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the lower court ruling.

Orten and Anderson have tried several times to obtain election machine data and push unfounded election fraud claims, often enlisting elected officials to help their cause.

The two women are close allies of GOP Rep. Phil Lyman.

Shortly after losing to Spencer Cox in the June GOP gubernatorial primary, Lyman's campaign submitted open records requests to county clerks asking for cast vote records and other election data. This prompted Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson to warn clerks to deny any open records requests seeking election data.

Lyman spoke at a Colorado election conspiracy conference in 2022, headlined by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell. Orten and Anderson worked with Lindell several times that year, including flying to an event in Las Vegas on his private plane where Lyman was also scheduled to speak.

Earlier this year, Lindell endorsed Lyman's gubernatorial campaign.

Orten and Anderson introduced Lyman to former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, who was accused by law enforcement of giving a person affiliated with Lindell access to voting machines in Mesa County. In August, Peters was convicted by a jury of seven counts related to the incident. Peters sponsored the event headlined by Lindell, where Lyman also spoke. Lyman interviewed Peters for an election conspiracy event in Utah put on by Orten and Anderson.

Former Utah County Commissioner Bill Lee worked with the pair to allow election conspiracy theorist Jeff O'Donnell, known online as "the Lone Raccoon," to address a Utah County Commission meeting about what he called "anomalies" in election data. Orten and Anderson also presented Lee with a "Fight for Freedom" award for "courageous leadership with mandates, election issues/audits."

After the 2022 Republican primary election, Lee requested access to the cast vote record before the commission met to certify the results. He did not get it.

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