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- Utah lawmakers plan significant electoral reforms after the 2024 election cycle.
- Proposals include creating an independent election office and changing the vote-by-mail system.
- Concerns about election oversight and transparency are driving these legislative efforts.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers are planning significant electoral reforms in the upcoming legislative session after a roller coaster ride during the 2024 election cycle.
Utah's primary process and vote-by-mail system came under fire from losing campaigns in 2024 who criticized the privacy of candidate signature packets, the subjectivity of signature verification and the uncertainty of relying on the U.S. Postal Service to return ballots.
After implementing numerous election safeguards in recent years, from mandatory audits to cleaned-up voter rolls, state legislators are looking to tackle Utah elections in a big way in 2025 to improve the process and maintain trust.
Independent election office
Maybe the largest of these reforms would be a return to 50 years ago.
In February, state Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, introduced a bill that would overhaul election oversight in Utah, creating a new executive agency to manage elections independent of the Lieutenant Governor's Office, similar to the secretary of state model Utah had until the lieutenant governor position was created in 1976.
The bill, HB490, would require Utah's statewide elected officials — the governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, auditor and attorney general — along with the Legislatures's House speaker and Senate president, to appoint the director of a new state Elections Office.
In a statement to the Deseret News, Wilcox said he will run a similar piece of legislation in 2025 to ensure "the independence of the elections office from the office of the lieutenant governor, as is done in 48 other states."
Utah and Alaska are the only states in the country where the role of chief election official is held by the lieutenant governor. In 33 states, the chief election official is elected. In the remaining states, the chief election official is appointed by the governor, state legislature or a board or commission.
Wilcox said the bill was held in 2024 for 2025 under an agreement with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to continue working on it in between sessions.
"We've made significant progress over the interim and I look forward to discussing the issue with my colleagues, stakeholders, and the public in the coming months," Wilcox said.
Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton, said allegations of conflicts of interest in the gubernatorial election this year has motivated lawmakers to give election oversight to "someone who just doesn't have any skin in the game as it pertains to the election."
"We've seen everything we needed to to make sure that that's going to happen and be a priority for our body this year," Lee said.
Opt-in for vote-by-mail
Multiple state lawmakers, including Lee, also want to disrupt the state's default vote-by-mail status.
Lee plans to introduce a bill that would change state code so that only registered voters who request a mail-in ballot will receive one — as opposed to all registered voters automatically receiving one. This shift would keep vote-by-mail as an option for everyone that wants it but would "clean up the voter rolls in one swoop," Lee said, for voters who have moved or died.
Under this bill, voters would be able to opt in to receive future mail-in ballots by marking a box on their mail-in ballot in the upcoming election cycle, Lee said.
In conversation with county clerks, Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, has also opened a bill file that would limit the number of voters who automatically receive a mail-in ballot to just those who have voted in the last two or four elections by mail, she said.
Vote-by-mail ... in-person
This year's extremely close 2nd Congressional District Republican primary highlighted concerns about some mail-in ballots being discarded by county clerks because of a late postmark stamp from the U.S. Postal Service despite having been placed in the mail one or more days before the deadline.
Birkeland said she had heard of multiple bills addressing concerns about postmark deadlines. Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, said he had heard the same, but isn't sure there is a great solution other than better advertising about the delays inherent to relying on the Postal Service instead of county dropboxes.
Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka, who heads one of the biggest conservative lobbying organizations in Utah, said the "only secure way to vote" requires a complete shift in how mail-in ballots are returned to eliminate dependence on post offices and signature verification which is more susceptible to human errors.
Ruzicka believes mail-in ballots should be subject to a voter identification process like traditional in-person voting. Her team will be pushing for reforms that would still allow ballots to be sent to voters via the mail but would require voters to return their ballot in-person at an official polling location where they would be asked to present a valid government ID.
"Nobody should be able to vote if they can't prove that they are who they say they are," Ruzicka said.
Convention-primary compromise
The Utah Eagle Forum is also lobbying for a secretary of state position, any bill that strengthens the caucus-convention system and bills to increase the transparency of candidate signature gathering to qualify for primary elections. Signatures found in so-called nomination packets should be subject to the same expectations of transparency as citizen ballot initiatives, which are made public online by the Lieutenant Governor's Office, Ruzicka said.
Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, expects increased transparency to be a major theme in the "dozens of bills" the state House will send to the Senate this year. This is likely a topic that can gain consensus support, Weiler expects.
"We are treating signature packets for referenda differently than we are for candidates who are doing the signature path," Weiler said. "I don't know that that makes sense."
