National scrutiny on mail ballots changed Utah’s elections system

Filed 1h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Heavy Heart

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Utah has sent every registered voter a mail ballot automatically since 2020, a policy a reliably red legislature once held up as a model. Under increased national scrutiny of mail voting, state lawmakers have now rolled that system back ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican and the state's top election official, has publicly described losing sleep over what she calls the Trump administration's gamesmanship around voting procedures. Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman, a Democrat whose office handles about a third of the state's voters and where 90% of participants vote by mail, says the same anxieties keep her up at 3 a.m.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

You have to notice the fellow who told his own people to vote by mail this cycle is the same one who spent years telling everybody else it was a scam. Utah didn't have a fraud problem with mail ballots, it had a popularity problem with the man in Washington, and that is apparently enough to make a state rewrite how it runs elections. When the top election official in a red state says the pressure keeps her up nights, that is not a partisan complaint, that is a fence line getting kicked by somebody who does not even live on that property.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Heavy Heart · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0