A common justification for universal mail-in balloting is that “every vote counts.”
To preface, ballots mailed in and postmarked on the Primary Election Day (June 25th) are ineligible to be counted. Because of this law, over 400 ballots cast by Iron County residents were uncounted, though many of the voters whose ballots were not counted claim to have dropped them off at the Post Office the day before the Primary Election, on the 24th. According to Commissioner Paul Cozzens, some 14 of the batch of 429 were even post marked on the 24th, yet the rest of the batch the ballots arrived with was still considered ineligible. The fact that the ballots arrived in the same batch indicates they likely were dropped off at the same time, and therefore should have been processed at the same time.
According to Iron County Clerk Jon Whittaker, he said while this may be true, due to the processing procedure, some of the ballots may have been turned in on the 24th, but not post marked until the day of the Primary Election (the 25th) which made them ineligible to be counted. Were any, or even all, of the rest of these 400+ ballots turned in on time? We don’t know. What happened in the Las Vegas sorting station that caused these to be delayed? We don’t know. Why are Iron County resident’s ballots going out of the state at all? Because that is part of the mail-in balloting system. Overall, there are too many unknowns when ballots leave voters hands to be handled by those who are not official election officials.
In a similar incident, in 2022, thousands of ballots were undelivered to voters homes. This is yet another instance that causes such great concern in having universal mail-in balloting as the primary method of holding safe and secure elections. In both cases, mail-in balloting caused a false sense of security among voters. Your ballot may have been among the remaining 400 uncounted votes.
Unfortunately, this exact scenario (ballots being dropped off the day before the Primary, but potentially not processed until it was too late) was discussed by the Utah State Legislature during the interim session. Nothing was done about it, and the votes of these citizens, while they have said they followed election law and procedure, went uncounted.
Another voter reported her ballot was uncounted because her signature didn’t match due to her arthritis. The due date to “cure” the ballot was July 5th, yet she did not receive notice in the mail that her ballot needed to be cured until it arrived late, on July 6th.
For these, and many other reasons, every year it becomes more and more clear that same day, in-person voting, with a government issued photo ID, (with the option to opt-in to mail-in balloting when necessary) is an objectively better, more secure, and more effective voting system for the residents of Utah generally, and Iron County specifically.
Elections should be determined by voters, not by the United States Postal System.
It is time Utah return to elections that are free, fair, secure, and certain to all, rather than continuing to use elections that are primarily convenient to some voters or government officials.
We applaud Utah House Representative Rex Shipp and his legislative effort to make in-person voting the primary election method in Utah. We encourage you to support him in this cause during the 2025 Legislative Session.
The Iron County GOP Executive Committee
