Utah county clerks oppose bill that seeks to make several changes to elections

Yahoo

01-03-2025

SALT LAKE CITY () — The Utah Clerks Association, which represents Utah's 29 county clerks, has penned an open letter to Utah's lawmakers opposing a bill that would reform how Utahns cast their ballots.
The bill is the . If passed, this bill would require voters to use the last four digits of their license or state ID on their ballot, change the deadline for when mailed-in ballots must be turned in, and — starting in 2028 — require voters to opt in to receive a ballot by mail.
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The Utah Clerks and Auditor Association said that while some concerns were addressed in the substitute version over the original bill, which sought to require mail-in ballots at a polling center, its letter to lawmakers said there are still 'critical' concerns.
In an interview with ABC4's Inside Utah Politics with Lindsay Aerts airing Sunday, Davis County Clerk Brian McKenzie explained that the 2028 runway to implement the opt-in option to vote by mail is not enough time to educate voters on the shift, which will disrupt the voting process.
McKenzie and Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman also argue that they don't have the equipment to efficiently verify voters' ID numbers, meaning they'll have to verify each number by hand.
'(Requiring ID) does add that level of security (to elections) but with that comes a huge time and resource component,' said Chapman. 'In order to accomplish this successfully, we're going to have to increase the amount of people that work with us.'
The bill also includes a deadline to opt in, currently set at 45 days before an election. McKenzie and Chapman argue that it is too far out and will increase the number of voters shifting to in-person voting because they didn't realize they had to opt in.
In addition, the clerks say they are worried about disenfranchising tribal voters who may not have access to a state ID, which has the potential to get the state sued.
'If the State of Utah is going to be making these significant policy shifts in how people vote, we want to make sure that we are minimizing the negative impacts on our voters,' said McKenzie.
McKenzie said the voters who are less in tune with politics — the ones who vote only during presidential election years — would be the most impacted by the changes proposed by Utah lawmakers.
When asked whether the clerk's concerns give him pause on the bill's impact on voters, its Senate Sponsor Mike McKell (R- Spanish Fork) said, 'It doesn't give me pause, it gives me something to work on this weekend,' he said.
McKell wouldn't specify which provisions he was willing to budge on, only that negotiations were ongoing.
'I think they were disappointed that some of their concerns weren't fully addressed as it came over (from the House), but we are going to continue to work with the clerks,' he said. 'I think they're probably concerns that I share and we're going to continue to work on it,' he said.
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