In an effort to encourage voters to use ballot drop boxes and save money, Utah County will no longer pay for return postage on mail-in ballots.
Clerk Aaron Davidson announced the change while speaking as the only county clerk in favor of HB 214 at the House Government Operations Committee on Jan. 22. That bill would require mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, rather than postmarked by the day before. It was placed on hold in committee.
During his time, Davidson expressed concern about the safety of ballots that go through the mail.
“I think that mail-in balloting, it actually should have been drop box return balloting. To try and encourage the voter to use the drop box rather than the mail-in ballot process.”
He said Utah County will have a better chain of custody if ballots don’t go through the post office. In addition, removing the postage would save the county about $110,000 each year.
In a subsequent interview with KUER, Davidson said it costs the county about $0.14 to bulk mail each ballot, but it costs them $0.77 for return postage when it's returned by a voter.
“And if the voter puts a stamp on, it's $0.68,” he said. “So it's less even for them than for us to pay for it.”
Voting advocates like Katharine Biele, president of the League of Women Voters of Utah, worry the lack of return postage will disenfranchise people who are elderly, disabled or low-income.
“Everything you do to make voting more difficult adds another barrier. You may say it's a small barrier, but add them all up and they become quite a bit.”
And unlike Davidson, Biele isn’t concerned about the safety of mail-in ballots.
“The league feels that the U.S. Postal Service has done a great job in keeping mailed ballots safe,” she said. “There are lots of safeguards to mailed ballots once they get into the county clerk's hands. So I think that is kind of a bogus argument.”
In a statement, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said she was “disappointed but not terribly surprised to hear that the Utah County Clerk intends to rescind prepaid postage on voters’ ballots.”
She added that “now seems like a good time to tell people that if they don’t have one, they can mail in their ballot without a stamp, it will still be delivered to their clerk’s office, and the clerk will have to pay the postage bill anyway.”
If a person does choose to vote by mail, Davidson said he has “total faith in the average person, and the average voter [is] going to put a stamp on it.”
Still, he anticipates he’ll hear from people who can’t make it to a drop box. He said he plans to “tell them, go ahead and drop it in the [mail] box without a stamp. And we're still going to get it. We're going to have to pay the more than $0.77. We haven't figured out how much that is yet.”
