Hello John,
Kate here with Stewardship Utah. Once again, our rights to vote-by-mail in Utah are under attack. Fortunately, Stewardship Utah has a long track record of successfully defending vote-by-mail, but we need your help!
Will you chip in to help us raise $10,000 directly supporting Stewardship Utah’s efforts to defend vote-by-mail?
Utah’s vote-by-mail program began in 2004 and has grown rapidly in the years since. In 2018, 27 of 29 counties voted by mail, and about 90% of voters in that election cast ballots by mail. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Utah lawmakers passed a law in 2020 that made vote-by-mail the default voting method for all registered voters. During the 2020 general election, 93% of Utah voters cast a mail-in ballot. The current vote-by-mail system deployed in Utah contains more than 20 security measures to ensure accuracy and transparency—from triple checks for signature verification to barcode readers to prevent duplicate votes.
Since it was introduced, support for vote-by-mail in Utah has been bipartisan and popular.
Beginning in 2020, some Utah policymakers began expressing concerns about vote-by-mail in Utah. Introduced this year, a bill named H.B. 300 arose from consistent yet unfounded accusations of voter fraud and security lapses in mail-in voting. Despite no evidence of voter fraud and a substantial track record of improving voter security and transparency in Utah, the campaign behind H.B. 300 attempts to create distrust of an election system that performs well and enjoys support from the vast majority of Utah voters. This time, legislative leadership, including Speaker Mike Schultz, is backing these efforts. What was formerly a fringe (and baseless) concern has now become standard and mainstream–an alarming development for our democracy in Utah.
