GOP lawmakers who claimed there’s been widespread voter fraud in Utah demanded a security study of the state’s mail ballots. The Wednesday reveal from researchers: Utah’s system works — and neither “in-person or mail voting is inherently more secure.”

The two approaches ultimately “remain subject to many of the same risks,” Utah Valley University researchers determined after analyzing election systems in Utah and five other states.

The taxpayer-funded, $100,000 study was commissioned by lawmakers earlier this year as part of a last-minute compromise to preserve the state’s vote-by-mail election system against a House GOP push to gut it. The results come as political attacks on mail voting continue both in the Beehive State and nationwide.

Rep. Jefferson Burton, R-Salem, introduced a law in 2025 that will eventually end Utah’s practice of sending a ballot to every active, registered voter’s mailbox. Starting in 2029, voters must opt in to receive a ballot through the mail.

[Read more: Utah will stop automatically mailing ballots in 2029. Here’s how to make sure you receive one.]

Lawmakers asked few questions and did not discuss making any changes to that plan after hearing from the researchers at a Government Operations Interim Committee meeting.

The findings

The study examined Arkansas and Tennessee, which primarily rely on in-person polling and require voters to provide an excuse to vote by mail; Arizona, which allows voters to request a mail ballot without an excuse; and Colorado and Washington, which, like Utah, conduct elections mostly by mail.

No voting method eliminates risk, and the security of a system depends on how its vulnerabilities are managed, the researchers’ presentation said.

The Legislature also tasked the researchers with identifying best practices for adding “a process where identification must be presented before depositing a ballot in a ballot drop box.”

Any method for doing that would add “costs and implementation challenges,” they found.

They explored three possibilities:

• Requiring counties to hire staffers to check and verify IDs at ballot drop boxes, ensuring the ID matches the name on the ballot envelope.

The estimated average time it would take each vehicle to drop off a ballot would increase from one minute or less to four minutes. That would result in a 20-minute wait time if five cars arrived at the same time, researchers pointed out.

This plan would cost Utah an estimated $1 million upfront for equipment, then approximately $8.1 million in labor per election year — estimates researchers noted are “far from comprehensive” and do not include other demands such as traffic control, law enforcement monitoring or supplies like canopies and chairs.

• Purchasing “smart drop boxes” that capture photos of voters and don’t require in-person staff. Employees elsewhere or artificial intelligence could later compare the images against Department of Motor Vehicles records.

It would cost at least $4.4 million for Utah to replace its 323 drop boxes with Sentinel smart drop boxes, and the cost would rise with optional power and design add-ons. Utah would then have to pay an additional base of $4.3 million for software subscriptions.

Those estimates do not account for the labor required to check the images.

• Using the State-Endorsed Digital Identity Program, which Utah is in the process of developing.

Lawmakers established the program to develop cryptographically verified digital credentials earlier this year, and identification in elections is one proposed application.

Voters could use a digital wallet for authentication, then scan unique QR codes on their ballot envelope and on the drop box, under one proposed approach researchers discussed.

They were not able to estimate the cost of adopting state-endorsed digital IDs, and noted that possibility raises “several” legal and logistical questions.

“Staffing drop boxes would reduce available drop-off hours, increase wait times, and increase election costs,” the UVU report said, “while unmanned verification would require further [technical] development to be utilized.”

Earlier this year, Burton had proposed further restrictions on voting by mail in HB479, Election Code Modifications. It called for two poll workers to monitor each ballot drop box, which would be open for limited hours. Starting in 2027, they would also check voters’ IDs.

The Senate blocked that idea, leading to the final-hour deal mandating the study.