Each month, NCSL’s Elections and Redistricting team interviews a local election official or legislative election leader to highlight the work officials and legislators are doing to improve election policy and administration in the U.S. To see other installments in this series, visit Election Conversations.
Brian McKenzie, the county clerk in Davis County, Utah, never really planned to be an election administrator.
“As is true for many election officials, I really kind of fell into it,” he says. “I was just a young kid returning from serving a mission for my church and I needed a job. I was hired as a part-time microfilm technician for Davis County and eventually worked full time in the records office.”
After serving in a variety of roles, including election technician and election manager, he eventually became the chief deputy in the clerk’s office.
“At the time, one office covered clerk and auditor duties,” he says. “In 2022, the offices separated, and my boss ran for auditor, and I ran for clerk. It was my first time running for public office, and I was successful in the election.”
At a recent NCSL meeting in Salt Lake City, McKenzie talked about election administration in his state.
How do you work with the Utah Legislature?
Over the years that I’ve been with the county, we have worked extensively with representatives and senators within Utah. We have a very active legislative policy group among the county clerks that meets weekly through the legislative session. We really are fortunate to have phenomenal legislators that are very willing to hear us and listen to our ideas and our input. I often have meetings scheduled with legislators to talk about proposed legislation to make our elections better.
We’re very involved in working with the legislators and the legislative drafting attorneys to come up with different pieces of legislation. For example, I worked on our 2018 same-day voter registration bill with the Democratic House sponsor, Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, and then with former Republican Sen. Deidre Henderson, now the lieutenant governor, to move the bill forward. Local election officials’ involvement in the policy processes is so critical, and we really appreciate when our Legislature is willing to listen to how the legislation will impact implementation.
Every two years, Utah’s Legislative Auditor General is required to conduct an audit of election processes, and we welcome them into our office so that they can observe our processes, ask questions and ensure that we are in compliance with statute. The legislative audit process helps find ways to improve and identify areas where we have shortcomings so that we work very quickly to correct those.
If you had one message to legislators, what would it be?
It’s the importance of making evidence-based decisions. Our legislators are contacted by so many different people in their constituencies, and they have strong feelings about different things. Sometimes the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the grease. So, the most important message to our legislators is, let’s push evidence-based policy, not perception-based policy. And it is so much easier if legislators come to us and say, “Here’s the problem. How would you recommend we fix it?” versus, “Here’s the solution,” and then your local officials have to figure out the problem that is trying to be fixed.
What is something unique to Utah when it comes to election administration and policy?
Something that is unique to Utah as a Republican state is the idea of vote by mail. Utah has a progressive nature when it comes to election administration despite being conservative in our values. We truly do try to take politics out of policy, and this is seen through our local election officials and as we push different policies through our Legislature. That is why we’ve been able to implement a vote-by-mail process, same-day registration, automated voter registration and vote centers. All of these things have been implemented with methodical and careful consideration seeking to benefit the voter.
We’ve been able to bridge the gap between policies that tend to be more progressive but bring in the conservative values that we hold to find a compromise.
What is your favorite part of your job, and what do you look forward to in the coming year?
My favorite part of the job is the people I get to work with every day and the people I serve every day. After that, it’s the principles, the idea of what we do. While some people may think it’s corny, every day the things I do have a significant impact in my community, on my state, in the U.S. and in the world. What we do truly matters.
I am looking forward to the legislative session to start—and to end! It’s an exciting time, being involved in the policymaking process and when you get to work with the legislators to see a bill that you helped develop and fine tune pass. You are gratified to make processes better for citizens and for the state.