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- Utah lawmakers declined to recommend a bill to prevent counting mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day.
- State law provides that ballots are valid if they are postmarked no later than the day before Election Day.
- Opponents argued it could disenfranchise voters by making voting less predictable.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers declined to recommend a bill that would have prevented the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after polls close on Election Day.
The bill was brought forward during the Legislature's interim meetings last month and was voted down during a meeting of the Government Operations Interim Committee Wednesday. Utah law requires mailed ballots be postmarked no later than the day prior to the election in order to count.
The proposal was meant to address a controversy that arose during the June Republican primary election for Utah's 2nd Congressional District, in which several hundred ballots were postmarked late and not counted. Colby Jenkins narrowly lost the race to Rep. Celeste Maloy and contended that the U.S. Postal Service was to blame for some of the ballots being marked late. Had those votes been counted, he argued, they may have changed the results of the election.
State Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, presented the bill to the committee Wednesday and said a similar situation occurred eight years ago in a Summit County election. He also argued that the postmark deadline is unconstitutional, thanks to a court ruling in Mississippi. Changing the cutoff for mailed ballots, he said, would put the onus on voters to make sure their ballots are returned in time and make for a smoother counting process because clerks would not need to count ballots with a timely postmark that arrive after Election Day.
"Twenty-six other states do this already. It works very well for them," he said. "They are the states that you see on election night that are able to post their results, that (are) 98% counted by midnight on Election Day — that's how they do it, is because they have the ballots. We don't have our ballots. We still have ballots trickling in for many days after our election."
The bill would also require county clerks to ensure that 95% of registered voters were within less than a 60-minute drive from a ballot drop box, a provision Thurston said would make it easier for voters in vast, rural counties.
Davis County Clerk Brian McKenzie didn't take a position on either side of the bill but told lawmakers the bill would make clerk's jobs "a little bit easier" when counting votes.
But opponents of the bill argued the provisions for mail-in ballots would disenfranchise voters whose ballots were mailed in a timely manner but not delivered until after the election.
"Over 90% of Utahns use, understand and trust our current system, and this change makes voting confusing and unknowable to voters," said Nat Williams, who spoke on behalf of the Let Utah Vote Coalition. "Voters can't anticipate or control when the U.S. Postal Service delivers their mail and — specific to San Juan County — rural drop boxes are often pulled early."
Several lawmakers on the committee expressed concern with the proposal, including Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, one of the chairmen of the committee. He said the postmark deadline is "not perfect," but said "you can't control when the mail arrives," but you can control when it is dropped off.
Sen. Jennifer Plumb, D-Salt Lake City, said she received many emails "expressing concerns about accessibility, concerns about voter suppression" and ultimately voted against it.
The measure failed to get a favorable recommendation from the interim committee, which would have allowed it to advance directly to the floor without needing a committee hearing during the upcoming general legislative session next year. Lawmakers can still propose similar legislation during the session, but it would start over in a standing committee.
