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utah
Influenced by the Architects of Project 2025, Utah Poised to Phase Out Automatic By-Mail Voting
"We already have a good voting system and it's not broken, so it doesn't need to be fixed," said the Utah advocacy director for Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
Mar 17, 2025
Utah has the unusual distinction of being a deep-red state where voters enjoy automatic by-mail voting, but that will likely change in the next few years, in part thanks to the influence of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.
The state is poised to codify legislation that would get rid of the practice of automatically mailing ballots to all active, registered voters. The GOP-controlled legislature recently passed a bill that will phase out the state's current automatic by-mail voting system by 2029 and also requires voters to list the last four digits of their state identification number with their return envelope beginning in 2026, according to the Utah News Dispatch. Those who opt in to voting by mail and include their state ID information will still be able to vote by mail.
The bill is a scaled back version of an earlier proposal that would have "drastically restricted voting by mail and required most Utahns to return their ballots in person at either a polling place or a drop box manned by at least two poll workers while showing their government-issued ID," per the Utah News Dispatch.
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox is expected to sign the legislation, The Washington Postreported Monday.
"We already have a good voting system and it's not broken, so it doesn't need to be fixed," Melarie Wheat, the Utah advocacy director for Mormon Women for Ethical Government, told the Post. "There are going to be people who are expecting their vote-by-mail ballot and are not going to get it, who are going to say, 'Well, it's just not worth it and I don't have time to go in at this point and vote in person.'"
Chris Diaz, director of legislative tracking for the Voting Rights Lab, told the outlet that "there's never been a state that did this, in taking that step backwards after adopting universal mail voting."
In 2012, Utah began allowing counties to run elections entirely by mail if they chose to do so, according to the outlet Bolts. Eventually, by 2018, about 90% of Utah voters cast ballots by mail, and in 2020 the state changed the default voting method for registered voters to vote by mail by automatically mailing a ballot to them (while still providing in-person voting options).
Researchers at Brigham Young University found that the shift to vote by mail led to a dramatic increase in voter participation in municipal elections.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting leads to fraud—despite having used the system himself in Florida. Research has found that incidences of fraud with mail-in ballots are exceedingly rare—and a recent legislative audit of Utah's election system failed to find "significant fraud."
State Rep. Jefferson Burton (R-64), the lawmaker who championed the bill, conceded to Bolts that the audit had not found widespread fraud in the state and that vote-by-mail has had a positive impact on turnout.
According to the outlet, when speaking about the bill Burton cited a scorecard maintained by the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that published the far-right policy blueprint Project 2025. The Election Integrity Scorecard gives Utah a relatively poor ranking—53 out of 100. Utah gets poor marks for its "absentee ballot management" and for currently not requiringa photo ID or a unique identifier when participating in vote by mail, among other criteria.
"As [the] Utah House GOP championed a bill to effectively end vote by mail, I kept hearing one organization repeatedly cited: The Heritage Foundation," wrote Emily Anderson Stern, a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, wrote on Bluesky.
"While pushing for an end to Utah's universal vote-by-mail election system, state lawmakers—including House Speaker Mike Schultz—have repeatedly relied on the Heritage Foundation's policy perspectives, referencing them in public debate, interviews, promotional materials, and social media posts," according to reporting published by Anderson Stern last week.
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Utah's Anti-Trans Bathroom Snitch Line Flooded With 'Bogus' Complaints
State Auditor John Dougall said that "concerned citizens should directly contact the bill sponsor, Rep. Birkeland," who doubled down on her support for the recently enacted law.
May 08, 2024
In just a week since its launch, Utah's " snitch line" for a new law restricting transgender people's access to some bathrooms and changing facilities was inundated with around 10,000 "bogus" reports, state Auditor John Dougall revealed Tuesday.
Dougall, a Republican running to represent the state's 3rd Congressional District, shared the figure with Utah News Dispatch and released a lengthy statement detailing his office's efforts to comply with House Bill 257, which GOP legislators passed and Gov. Spencer Cox signed earlier this year.
The law prohibits trans students in K-12 public schools from using bathrooms or changing rooms that align with their gender identity, according to an online resource from the ACLU of Utah and Equality Utah. The restrictions also apply to changing rooms in government-owned or -controlled buildings—such as the Utah Capitol and city or county recreation centers—but not to the facilities in private spaces such as restaurants, shopping malls, or theaters.
Since Dougall's office launched the online complaint form last week, Utahans and other opponents of H.B. 257 have posted the link on social media with messages like, " You know what to do." Some people even shared screenshots of their fake submissions.
Among the critics of the form was state Sen. Jennifer Plumb (D-9), who
said on social media last week: "Apparently Utah's solution to people feeling unsafe in restrooms is to encourage folks to take photos of and focus extreme attention on the private parts of others who are taking care of a biological need to eliminate waste? What could possibly go wrong?"
Dougall responded that "our hotline has historically allowed complainant to upload additional supporting information. My office has no interest in those types of photos which, of course you know, would be illegal." The auditor went back and forth with Plumb, who stressed that "these 'hotline' reporting spaces are what make people unsafe."
In his Tuesday statement, Dougall said that he has not received "a single legitimate complaint" and that his office "only investigates alleged violations of the statute by government entities" and "will not investigate the actions of any private individuals."
"The office created the complaint form to comply with a statutory mandate—a role we did not request. Indeed, no auditor sets out to become a bathroom monitor," Dougall continued. He noted that "the bill was rushed to final passage" and neither its sponsor, state Rep. Kera Birkeland (R-4), "nor any other legislator consulted with this office regarding this newly mandated obligation."
"I recognize that many Utahns feel trampled by an invasive and overly aggressive Legislature that too often fails to seek input from those most affected," he added. "The Legislature crafted these public policies, and only the Legislature can revise them. Concerned citizens should directly contact the bill sponsor, Rep. Birkeland, and other legislators at le.utah.gov."
Responding to Dougall's statement on social media Tuesday, Birkeland
said in part that "it's not surprising that activists are taking the time to send false reports" and "backlash from this legislation was completely expected."
"But that isn't a distraction from the importance of the legislation," she added, claiming that the law protects women and girls, and that opposition to it comes from "a loud and vocal minority."
Since North Carolina passed the nation's first bathroom bill in 2016, similar laws and other state-level legislation attacking various trans rights have been advanced by Republican lawmakers throughout the United States, often provoking legal challenges.
As trans journalist Erin Reed, who tracks anti-trans legislation across the country, highlighted Tuesday:
The ordeal over the bathroom reporting tool in Utah mirrors problems seen in many other anti-trans bathroom laws targeting transgender adults. These laws are extremely difficult to enforce. Questions of enforcement were brought up often in the debate, with many pointing out that you can't always tell who is transgender. This sentiment was shared in the Senate Business and Labor Committee by Dustin Parmley, a public defender, who stated: "This bill is impossible to enforce. It relies on citizens to determine if someone is feminine or masculine enough to use it. The exceptions are for hidden conditions, such as someone's surgery or birth certificate. It will lead to unnecessary police investigations."
"Other attempts to create such forms have similarly failed,
such as in Virginia, where Gov. Glenn Youngkin's tip line was flooded with complaints about Beowulf, or in Missouri, where scripts for the Bee Movie were sent in," Reed noted. "In this case, it appears that when faced with problems enforcing anti-trans laws, the state of Utah attempted to sidestep the issue by abdicating the responsibility of enforcement to its citizens."
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Complaint of the Great Salt Lake
I’m down to 900 square miles now; I’ve been told that if things stay this way, I’ll be gone in five years.
Apr 06, 2024
I have a story for you this April about how your tax dollars work. It may not be obvious at the start, but be patient. I need to tell it to you before it’s too late.
In the old days, my waters filled 3,000 square miles, and the streams flowing to me from the Wasatch Mountains kept me full. Along my banks were millions of brine flies that would get into people’s teeth, but the flies fed the birds and the birds fed any creatures willing to hunt them. Though my waters were unfit for people to drink and would pickle any washing in them, there was salt there worth people’s taking. The Shoshone and Ute who visited me took what they needed and otherwise left me alone. It was hard for them to live near me anyway, but we got along. They respected me, and I stayed full.
After a while, the Mormons came, fleeing campaigns of religious cleansing further east. In all his shrewdness, Brigham Young reckoned that no one else would want to settle anywhere near me. You know the rest pretty well. The Mormons were well organized and resourceful enough to build farms along my streams, and they prospered well enough to supply wagon trains going further west to Oregon and California and eventually set up a state. They knew the limits of the land, and for a time, there was no quarrel between the settlers and me.
Once upon a time we got along. No more.
By and by, more settlers arrived. The community grew, and people discovered they could mine my salt and so a commercial industry in salt started. More people came, and industry grew. Motor vehicles followed, with more and more burning of oil and gas. Farmers in the area discovered they could grow high grade alfalfa for export, but that required mechanization and lots of fresh water. As commercial agriculture took more and more water from my streams, the people and I became rivals, and the atmosphere itself began to change.
Utah’s delegation in Congress made sure all this evident prosperity was well supported in Washington. There were plenty of subsidies for the fossil fuels needed to drive this commerce, and for the commerce in armament which grew in size across the nation after 1945. Very few of your lawmakers seemed to mind. The subsidies continued, and the air started to go crazy.
By the 2000s, endless war had begun, and still goes on, along with the Long Drought. There’s less snow in the Wasatch Mountains, and less water in my streams, though no less insistence on it from the alfalfa. Your recent federal effort to rescue the climate, though well-meant, is puny compared to the support your government gives the oil and gas devouring military establishment and the wars it supports in Gaza and Ukraine, where the Earth weeps.
I’m down to 900 square miles now. My waters are less deep. I don’t feel very good, and can’t shake it. I’ve been told that if things stay this way, I’ll be gone in five years. These days, any one of you could count dead birds by the hundreds along my shores, and smell them. The bed on which I now toss and turn has salt in it, but most of it is arsenic-laced toxic dust. When it blows into the air, which it does more and more often, you people breathe it in, especially in the poorest neighborhoods nearest me. Now that the air over Salt Lake City has turned brown, emphysema, Alzheimer’s, and ALS follow. What your leaders call national security makes you sick, and your taxes pay for it, in spite of yourselves.
Once upon a time we got along. No more. Around your country and around the world, you don’t even get along among yourselves, and too many of you have talked yourselves into believing there’s no way out. So much for policy that comes from diseased minds. You sicken, and I die.
Unless you do something about it. I can’t. But you can. No more diseased minds. Wise up. Let Iowa, where the Mormons rested on their way west, grow alfalfa for export. Get free of coal and oil and endless warfare, and maybe the air will be less crazy. Care for one another, because each of you depends on everyone else to meet your needs. Covid-19 should have taught you at least that much.
Even in the Long Drought, there’ll be enough water left in my streams for the rest of your farms, and some for me to drink if you treat my streams with some respect. Once I get well, our quarrels will end. There’ll be no more of my poison dust in the air, and you can take some of my salt for yourselves, just like in the old days. And maybe the Ute and Shoshone will come for a visit.
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