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2026 Election for Utah County Clerk

The Republican primary for Utah County Clerk is over, and Utah County won. Corey Astill beat incumbent Aaron Davidson.

Good riddance to the drama. Davidson spent three years treating the clerk’s office like a stage — parroting the Trump line that mail-in voting is fraud-ridden and can’t be trusted, even declaring our ballots aren’t “safe and secure” despite zero evidence of widespread fraud.

And it wasn’t just talk. He systematically made it harder to vote: killed paid return postage and ran a “fast cast” system that drove confusion and sky-high signature rejections in 2024.

He also kept setting policy that was never his to set. The clerk administers elections — he doesn’t get to crusade against the system from the clerk’s chair. That’s the Legislature’s job, not his.

Astill is just there to do the work: run honest, accessible elections and rebuild trust. No crusades. No drama. That’s all this office ever needed.

As I’m always a fan of keeping it local, I had the AI generate a breakdown of how Spanish Fork voted in this race. As of the time of this post, here’s where it stands: Spanish Fork precinct breakdown.

Posted by Paul

AI is here

Instead of writing code directly, software engineers are increasingly just talking through the work with AI agents. That shift seems like it happened insanely fast. In some ways, maybe that is a better future. But we still ought to ask what it means when complex knowledge work, the kind that once commanded a high salary, starts to become commoditized. Are we really comfortable with that? What are the risks? And what happens when we retool, retrain, or decide we do not want to do this work anymore?
Posted by Paul

Redistricting in Utah 2021

This week I attended a Legislative Redistricting Committee meeting in Orem, Utah.  I presented my idea for a simple map for Utah’s Congressional districts, as noted below:


 I drew the boundaries such as it aligns with historical communities of interest, and also accounts for growth. Utah county plus the South Salt Lake County cities of Riverton and Draper are included as a single congressional district.  Salt Lake County has too much population to be in a single district so I kept the City of Salt Lake, along with the East Side in tact.  The entire second congressional district is in Salt Lake County.

Posted by Paul

Covid in Utah

I really am tired of Covid 19. Isn’t it about time we just all get vaxed and be done with this pandemic. Does it really impede our personal liberties to do what is necessary for the good of public health. We have an obligation to the good and health of others. We do not live in a bubble, what we do has a direct effect on others.

Posted by Paul

Deseret News Half Marathon

Last Friday I ran the Deseret News Half Marathon.  It wasn’t my fastest run, but I did record it with a GoPro.  Enjoy

Posted by Paul

Hail to Daylight Savings

I hate going home when it is cold, and dark. For this reason I look forward with great anticipation to the coming switch from standard time to daylight savings time. If I could have my way we would be DST every day of the year.

Utah seems like the most ideal place for this switch, given our location in relation to the rest the time zones in the United states. The Pacific Time Zone is around 100 miles east of the Wasatch Front, so when DST comes and we have the long summer months, daylight lasts for a long time, as the sun is just beginning its journey out of Mountain Time zone.

I’ve had this thought on my mind for a while, but until I started writing
this I never thought about proving it out. A quick google search proves this to be true.

Here are sun rise and sunset times as of today.

Denver may get light earlier, but who cares, it gets dark earlier.

In good old Provo, Utah the sun sets later, giving Paul Jones Dayton the late light that he loves.

Daylight Savings Time: I salute you.

Posted by Paul

At least one entry in 2016

I’ve kept this blog going for years but have really neglected it for a while. I don’t think I really intend on updating regularly, but for consistency sake and for good old tradition sake I’m posting something right now.

The last post noted I bought Star Wars tickets to the Force Awakens. Well a year has passed and I have already seen the next Star Wars move, Rogue One. Perhaps the best of the season.

I should mention that I’m extremely upset, and concerned about the future with the recent election of Donald Trump. Never in a million years would I have thought he would be president, and especially becoming it has he did, by trumping up racism. If I write here going forward, I may use it as a nice way to vent about what is going on with the presidency of the United States, and my general thoughts on the state of the republic.

That’s all for now.

Posted by Paul