ST. GEORGE — A Southern Utah lawmaker is proposing to do away with Utah’s universal mail-in voting system and return to in-person voting, which he considers more secure.
Last week, Republican Rep. Phil Lyman, of Blanding, introduced HB 371 that would return voting to in-person, paper ballot voting and place strict requirements on absentee ballots.
Lyman clarified in an email to St. George News sent Wednesday that his bill do not completely do away with the mail-in voting. Instead, it ends “mailing everyone on the voter list a ballot by default.”
“If a person wants to vote by mail, they will have to request a ballot and will have to provide a reason and verification of their existence,” Lyman wrote. “This provides a chain of verification for mail in ballots.
The bill would also eliminate ballot drop boxes, driver-thru voting, require ballots to be posted online for public review and prohibit voter registration drives. The option of being able to prove your identity at a polling location without a photo ID would also be eliminated.
Third-party audits of state and federal voting in races where the projected winner won by less than 15 percentage points would also be conducted under the bill.
“The proposed audit would be more difficult to perform under current all mail-in ballot provisions, but it could be done and would provide a valuable evaluation of risk controls that are put in place,” Lyman said in the email.
“The central element of this bill is the audit,” he said. “All other provisions are to make the audit more effective. The legitimacy of the election is suspect, not because of presumed fraud, but because of absolute weaknesses in our current election system.”
Lyman added the weaknesses in the system are magnified because of contracts signed with certain vote-counting agencies like Dominion Voting Machines Systems, Center for Tech and Civic Life and other entities he claims have “a long record of attacking republicans and favoring democrats.”
Lyman, along with Reps. Mike Schultz and Michael Peterson, penned a guest editorial published in the Deseret News on Dec. 7 supporting the use of independent audits for Utah’s voting system in order to support transparency and integrity in the process.
“The right to vote, and confidence in our elections are fundamental to the function of our republic,” the three wrote. “As legislators, we recognize it is our duty to strengthen confidence in our election system, not by blindly accepting it as secure, rather by consistently scrutinizing and enhancing the process by which ballots are printed, distributed, tallied and safeguarded for appropriate verifications.”
The call for audits has been had not only in Utah, but also other Republican states in the wake of the 2020 presidential election following accusations made by former President Donald Trump of there being voter fraud and mail-in voting playing a part in that.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Lyman said last week that he does not believe claims made by others that the 2020 election was free of fraud.
“I don’t believe it because I look at it and see these anomalies that they can’t explain,” Lyman said.
Opposing the idea of ending Utah’s mail-in voting system is Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson. Her office oversees the state’s elections, and together Gov. Spencer Cox, has defended the state’s voting process as safe and secure.
“I’m concerned about any legislation that would make it harder for people to exercise their right to vote. There’s absolutely no evidence that Utah’s vote-by-mail system isn’t safe and secure,” Henderson said in a statement to Fox 13 News. “What’s more, the public loves it. I oppose any effort to undermine our election system, as this bill does.”
In recent years, cities within Washington County and the county overall have switched to mail-in voting. This change has been credited, in part, with a rise in voter participation across the county and in its municipalities.
Washington County Clerk/Auditor Susan Lewis previously told St. George News that voting by mail in Washington County was safe and secure and that was also subject to multiple redundancies during counting.
This includes internal audits of the county’s voting process for accuracy up to and after the election, Lewis said.
Prior to votes coming in on Election Day, the Clerk’s Office will test its process with a run of 300-500 ballots with a predetermined outcome. These audits have thus far shown the county’s equipment and process to be working as intended.
“We test everything,” Lewis said. “We feel very comfortable that they are working right.”
Lyman has said he is skeptical of the internal audits and would rather see third-party audits instead.
Should HB 371 make it through the legislative process, it will result in municipal and county governments having to boost their funding for elections in order to cover the costs of manpower and new election devices. This is an area that local governments have been able to save money otherwise since converting to the vote by mail process.
HB 371 is similar to a recent ballot initiative pushed by a group called Secure Vote Utah that aimed by returning Utah to in-person voting.
Needing nearly 138,000 signatures from across the state to get on the November ballot, the measure appears to have fallen short with state election officials reporting only around 28,000 signatures had been turned in by the deadline had earlier this week.
HB 371 is currently waiting to be considered by a Utah House committee.
Updated Feb. 17 at 3:20 p.m. to include remarks from Rep. Phli Lyman and an update on the Secure Vote Utah initiative.
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