Will Utah's vote-by-mail reform really make elections safer?

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz said Tuesday the state's new vote-by-mail process is "a huge step" toward better election security despite the major changes made from the original proposal he supported.

Over the course of the session, HB300 underwent a dramatic transformation from initially demanding in-person voting with photo identification to ultimately requiring ballots be turned in along with the last four digits of government ID. The bill also requires voters to renew their request for a mail-in ballot every eight years, after initially opting-in.

Leaders framed the final package as a "Utah Way" resolution to a contentious national issue. However, key stakeholders have remained skeptical for different reasons.

County clerks, who came out as neutral on the final version, worried the legislation opened up more problems than it solved, while some conservatives, like Schultz, expressed frustration that more stringent voter identification requirements were not included.

"If you look at that bill, it's better than the current system," Schultz, R-Hooper, said. "But I think we need to spend more time focusing on voter ID. We will keep working on it."

Influence of Heritage Foundation on HB300

Schultz told the Deseret News that lawmakers worked "closely" with the nation's most influential conservative policy think tank, the Heritage Foundation, on HB300, which Gov. Spencer Cox has signaled he will sign into law.

Schultz mentioned the group — known for its Project 2025 policy proposals — repeatedly during a legislative wrap-up event hosted by the Herbert Institute for Public Policy and the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.

Echoing a central talking point from the seven-week 2025 legislative session that wrapped up earlier this month, Schultz emphasized that Utah is currently tied for 33rd on Heritage's "Election Integrity Scorecard," largely due to a lack of identification and opt-in requirements for mail-in ballots.

"Utah ranks at the top in many areas, but elections is an area we needed to work on," Schultz said.

In an interview with the Deseret News, Heritage Foundation's manager of election law reform, Hans von Spakovsky, said that by implementing ID requirements similar to the ones Georgia passed in 2021, Utah has enhanced its system, which will likely boost trust and turnout.

"When you improve the security of the election process by doing things like putting in an ID requirement ... that increases public confidence," von Spakovsky said. "Every state that has done that ... has seen not decreases in turnout but increases in registration and turnout."

Vote by mail is even more secure when an ID number is paired with signature verification, making it extremely difficult for "large-scale ballot fraud" to occur, von Spakovsky said.

But from Heritage's point of view, he explained, universal vote by mail has the basic problem of relying on voter rolls, which are notoriously difficult to keep accurate, and relying on the U.S. Postal Service, which frequently struggles to deliver ballots in a timely fashion.

By directly addressing these concerns flagged by Heritage's metrics, Schultz said Tuesday he hopes the Legislature's election reforms will bump the state to the Top 10 in the country on the scorecard.

Will HB300 really make elections safer?

The Legislature's vote-by-mail compromise was framed as a response to complaints from the 2024 election cycle, particularly the 2nd Congressional District primary, where a razor-thin recount hinged on the judgement of election workers and the ballot cure process that accompanies signature verification.

HB300 will completely replace signature verification with the last four digits of a voter's drivers license, free state ID or Social Security card as the means of confirming voter identity. A signature affidavit will continue to be an option for voter identification until Jan. 1, 2029.

HB300 will also replace universal vote by mail with an opt-in program. Beginning in 2029, voters will only receive a mail-in ballot if they have requested one when registering to vote, renewing their license or visiting the lieutenant governor's website.

Mail-in ballot status will expire after eight years or after a voter fails to participate in two consecutive general elections.

Weber County Clerk Ricky Hatch agreed that the new opt-in requirements will make "minor improvements" to election security by helping to clean up voter registration lists but said the new identification process could be counterproductive.

"Replacing the signature with the four digits does not make the election more secure," Hatch said. "It's a lot harder to forge somebody else's signature than to grab the last four of their ID, particularly within the same household."

While scanning four digits instead of comparing signatures could save clerks time by not having to reach out to voters to cure their rejected ballots, Hatch predicted the bill's provision requiring mail-in ballots to be received by 8 p.m. on election night could "disenfranchise voters through no fault of their own" because of Postal Service delays.

The status quo is already secure, Hatch said, and additional changes could complicate election administration and confuse voters.

How to counter cratering confidence

But, according to Schultz, HB300 is just as much about preventing the perception of fraudulent elections as it is about fixing faults in the system.

"We have good elections in Utah because we have good people," Schultz said. "(But) as trust is eroding in government, we can't let that happen on our elections."

The bill also requires the lieutenant governor, who oversees election administration, to analyze voter registration databases at least 90 days before every regular election, to identify ways to scrutinize households with a disproportionate number of registered voters and to enter federal programs that notify states of noncitizens and criminals who cannot legally vote.

The Sutherland Institute, a Salt Lake City-based conservative policy think tank, believes that what Utah's 2025 election reform did is balance the prudence of incremental reform with voters' demand for convenience and the urgent need to shore up trust amid political attacks on elections.

Utah's efforts to balance these competing values showed that election policy does not have to be constrained by a false choice between security and access, said Sutherland's chief growth officer Derek Monson.

This aligns with a Sutherland survey showing that most Utah voters say enhanced ID requirements will increase election confidence more than anything and that same-day voting requirements will do the opposite.

And, from Monson's point of view, if a change can increase trust in the current political environment without sacrificing ease of access, it's well worth the effort.

"If you have a perfectly solid system, but a large chunk of people have a perception that it's not protecting the integrity of our elections, then you still have a problem," Monson said.

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