After weeks of negotiation over a bill that would effectively end Utah’s universal vote-by-mail elections system, lawmakers published a nearly 4,000-line new version of the legislation that still requires voters to opt in to submitting ballots through the mail, but requires they elect to receive a ballot at their home.
While the revised bill means not everyone would receive a ballot in the mail beginning next presidential election season, it also has less burdensome requirements to participate in an election entirely by mail.
After a party-line vote, with one Republican joining the Democratic minority, members of the House of Representatives voted Tuesday to advance the bill to the Senate.
Rep. Jefferson Burton, R-Salem, the sponsor of “Amendments to Election Law,” or HB300, has been working since the beginning of the month to find a compromise with members of the Senate, who were skeptical of cutting off access to voting by mail.
The practice is popular among Utahns. The Salt Lake Tribune found that in last year’s primary election, of the counties that provided data on voting methods, approximately 96.7% of voters used the ballot that arrived in their mailbox.
According to Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, and the sponsor in the Senate, lawmakers are “still working on” the bill, and it will likely continue to change as it makes its way through the Legislature.
County clerks in the state, who administer Utah’s elections, have expressed worries about how the bill might impact their offices’ budgets, their ability to do their job and voter participation. That has not changed with the substitute.
“We genuinely appreciate that Rep. Burton and House leadership have proactively reached out to get our input on this bill,” Weber County Clerk Ricky Hatch said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune. “While the first substitute is an improvement over the original bill, clerks still have some significant concerns. We look forward to working with Sen. McKell and Senate leadership to make continued improvements.”
‘The idea was to make it very, very easy’
If the current version of the bill passes, starting in 2028, ballots would not be sent to every Utahn through the mail unless a voter has asked to receive one. Once the voter requests to participate in elections by mail, a ballot would show up in their mailbox for eight years unless they fail to vote in a regular election.
The new version also provides that voters may ask to receive ballots in the mail when they apply for or renew their ID or driver license, or when they vote in person. Utahns would also be able to make that selection via the state’s online voter registration system.
“So you have a three-year window where you opt in,” McKell told reporters Tuesday, “but you opt in at every touch point. You can opt in by voting in person, you can opt in by updating your drivers license, you can opt in by renewing your registration or you can simply go in and opt in. The idea was to make it very, very easy.”
Limiting who gets a ballot in the mail, McKell said, is an “additional enhancement in security.”
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, speaks in the Utah Senate, Feb. 24, 2023. McKell is the Senate sponsor of "Amendments to Election Law," or HB300.
If the bill passes with the substitute, Utah would also begin to transition toward relying on the last four digits of a state ID number rather than the voter’s signature to verify a mail-in ballot. After January 2028, Utahns would not be able to vote without a state ID.
There are some limited accommodations built into the substitute related to ID renewal for people with disabilities, or who otherwise have difficulty making the trip to obtain a new ID.
The substitute strips a provision from the previous version of the bill that would have required two people to watch a ballot drop box and check IDs, as well as limit drop box hours for early voting to between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. But ballots sent through the mail would have to arrive before 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.
Burton told representatives that the state would work with counties to educate voters on changes to the election system.
“It’ll be everything from mailers, to an email campaign and maybe even even more,” he said. “I mean, it’s just going to be based on what each county thinks they need to make sure the voters are aware of the change.”
While counties will likely shoulder the majority of costs associated with changes, the new version of the bill asks that the Legislature appropriate $2 million toward information campaigns.
In addition to adding barriers to voting by mail for all Utahns, voting rights advocates have criticized the bill for how it might impact the ability of members of traditionally disenfranchised communities to participate in elections.
“This bill creates confusion for voters, county clerks, and post offices across Utah,” House Democrats wrote in a statement after Tuesday’s vote.
“We are especially concerned about the impact on Utahns with disabilities, seniors, and those facing systemic hardships, who may struggle to navigate the new restrictions or obtain the required identification,” the minority caucus continued. “These unnecessary barriers will disproportionately affect those who already face challenges in accessing the ballot. Voting should be accessible — not restricted.”
While municipalities’ position on the substituted bill is unclear, the Utah League of Cities and Towns opposed the initial version. According to the organization, approximately 94% of cities saw an increase in turnout for their elections after the institution of universal vote by mail.
“In municipal elections, [voters] probably just aren’t even aware that an election is happening. If they’re not sent a ballot, they don’t vote,” Brigham Young University political science professor Michael Barber, who studies elections, previously told The Tribune.
More secure elections?
Much of the bill is driven by election security concerns raised by the Republican supermajority.
In presenting his bill on the House floor, Burton cited the conservative Heritage Foundation — the rightwing nonprofit known for preparing Project 2025 in anticipation of President Donald Trump’s election — as placing Utah low on its “Election Integrity Scorecard.” At the top of the organization’s list are states researchers have ranked as the most difficult to vote in.
Burton said the current version of the bill would take Utah from a 33 out of 50 “up to around 9 out of 50.”
House Speaker Mike Schultz has championed Burton’s bill as a way to restore trust in Utah’s elections, pointing to an audit of the 2024 election that found two “likely deceased” Utahns voted in the 2023 municipal elections and three people seemingly voted twice as a reason to reevaluate the state’s by-mail voting system. It did not find any evidence of widespread or significant fraud.
According to a poll by the conservative-leaning Sutherland Institute, the vast majority of Utahns are confident in the state’s election results.
The substitute also attempts to take on concerns Schultz and other GOP lawmakers have about voter rolls, and whether the records of the deceased, non-residents and people ineligible to vote for other reasons are adequately cleared away.
The lieutenant governor, who oversees elections in the state, would be required to develop procedures for “improving the accuracy of voter registration roles[sic]” by determining how many people are registered to vote in a single home, investigating a voter registration when a ballot is returned as undeliverable and by entering into data sharing agreements to obtain federal citizenship and courts information regarding voters.
The Senate has so far not considered a separate bill passed by the House that would require the state to withdraw from a longstanding data-sharing agreement with other states as a member of the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center, more commonly known as ERIC.
According to a December 2023 infographic published by the lieutenant governor’s office, in the decade Utah has been a member of ERIC, the organization has helped the state review 675,000 voter records and remove over a quarter of a million names of people who had moved out of state that would have remained on rolls otherwise.
