SALT LAKE CITY — From disorganized crowds to technological errors and a lack of volunteers, there was no shortage of problems for Republican voters during Tuesday's caucus to choose the state's desired presidential nominee.
Some caucus participants are saying the state's GOP party should have held a primary instead, just as Democrats did.
With hundreds of people looking to take part in the caucus were seen refreshing their phones to register at Brighton High School on caucus night.
"You wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait, and then you get kicked out," said an exasperated Lynn Parker.
Republican voters at other locations reported similar frustrations. Lifelong GOP Party voter Margaret Renzo’s phone kept telling her she wasn't eligible to participate, saying that she was affiliated with another party.
"It almost seemed as though something just shut down the site or shut everything down. Maybe it was overloaded, I don’t know, but it was very concerning," she said Wednesday.
Another voter, Naomi Foreman, claimed her representative just never showed up.
"It was a cluster to mess with," said Foreman. "We’re talking about a presidential primary that should have some say. And this is the first time they’ve done this? They wanted to be the guinea pig this time around? It was serious."
Foreman worries the handling of the caucus could have impacted the results in which former President Donald Trump collected all 40 of the state's delegates.
"I was going to go vote for [Nikki] Haley and my vote didn’t count and my husband was, too. That’s two votes," she said.
However, other voters said their experience was smooth.
"Our leadership really worked hard to make sure, ‘OK, we’ve got the technology available but if something goes wrong, here’s what we pivot to. Here’s paper stuff so you can just move over to that,' and that’s what we did in our precinct," explained precinct host Brandon Watters.
Watters believes the caucus system is still better than a primary.
"I think if the time is spent and you are just really willing to make the sacrifices to engage with people, I think it becomes a rewarding experience if you have an open mind about it," he said.
After the Super Tuesday confusion, Utah's GOP party chairman said they’re looking into the technical and logistical errors.
"We should always be willing to look to learn," said Robert Axson. "So what are the lessons? What worked tonight? What didn’t work? Those are certainly things that I would be eager to identify so that we can inform future party decisions."
Watters just hopes the complaints don’t discourage future voters.
"We have people who will go and wait in line for two to three hours to ride a two-minute ride at Disneyland. But they don’t want to go and spend a couple hours every two years to make their voices heard," he argued.
Despite some voters having to leave because of the caucus confusion, the Utah Republican party reports over 75,000 voters were were able to cast their ballot.
