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SALT LAKE CITY -- Just a few years ago, Governor Jon Huntsman issued a challenge for Utah to improve some of the lowest voter turnout numbers in the nation. Governor Huntsman formed, and Governor Gary Herbert subsequently endorsed, a commission to explore the extent of the problem and make suggestions for improvement. As the Chair of the Governor's Commission on Strengthening Utah's Democracy, I saw a diverse and bipartisan group of respected community and political leaders come together to identify voter registration as one of the key areas ripe for reform.
Thanks to new research from the Pew Center on the States, we have a better picture of the way we register voters and conduct elections. We now know the extent of the dysfunction in state election systems. The numbers are startling.
According to Pew:
- Nearly 24 million—one in every eight—voter registration records in the United States are no longer valid or significantly inaccurate. In Utah, it is even worse—approximately two of every five voter registrations have problems.
- More than 1.8 million deceased voters remain on state voter rolls.
- Approximately 2.75 million people are registered in more than one state.
Fortunately, Lt. Governor Greg Bell and his excellent staff led by Mark Thomas have taken the recommendations of the Governor's Commission to heart, and have been working for several years to build a better voter registration system for Utah's voters and taxpayers.
Utah leaped forward when it became one of the first states in the nation to offer online voter registration in 2010. Online registration is a secure, efficient and cost- effective way to get our eligible citizens onto the state rolls. Data from Arizona, for example, has shown it costs $.83 to process a paper registration form, compared to $.03 to process an online application.
Utah's efforts have not ended at online voter registration. Utah will join seven other states, including our neighbors Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, to share data and improve the quality of our registration rolls. State and county officials from Utah have been partnering with Pew and election officials from many other states to harness technology that will allow Utah to compare its voter registration lists with other state data, such as records from motor vehicle agencies, along with records from neighboring states. The more data our election officials have at their disposal, along with advanced technology to manage that data, the better able they will be to make informed decisions on records.
For example, officials can weed out duplicate and outdated records that can be flagged for investigation and removal months, and, in some cases, years, before election officials would be able to act under our current system. Individuals who are eligible, but have not yet registered could be contacted and offered a secure and efficient path to register, such as online registration. Whereas most registration activity overburdens election offices in the few short weeks before a major election, election officials could affirmatively and efficiently reach out to voters during less busy times of the election year.
As with online voter registration, the Lt. Governor's office and Utah's local election officials have again put Utah at the forefront of cutting-edge, advanced policies that will keep our government and elections efficient and engaging for the public, and help point our sister states in the direction towards more efficiently-run and secure elections. Utahns, and indeed, all Americans, benefit when all eligible voters can conveniently and confidently participate in our democracy.
