Support HB 371 Voting Revisions (2022)
Urgent! HB 371 to Ending Vote-by-Mail in Committee Wed 4PM
HB 371 Voting Revisions, sponsored by Representative Phil Lyman, is on the agenda of the House Government Operations Committee Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Feb 23, 2022, beginning at 4:00 PM.
Several key provisions of the "Secure the Vote Act of 2022" Initiative are in this bill. It is very worthy of our support!
CALL TO ACTION:
1. Share this message with your family, friends, and colleagues.
2. Urge members of the House Government Operations Committee to support this bill.
Send them an email today.
Text them tomorrow (Wednesday) at four o'clock.
3. Join other election integrity advocates at the Capitol tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon at 3:30, and then attend the four o'clock committee meeting in person; or, join the committee meeting via Zoom.
WE NEED AS MANY PEOPLE IN PERSON AND OVER ZOOM AS POSSIBLE.
We need YOU. We need hundreds of people like YOU.
If we do not secure our elections, we lose our voice in our government.
Leadership opposes this bill; so we must change their minds.
The following are members of the House Government Operations Committee:
Rep. A. Cory Maloy (R), Chair - 801-477-0019 - corymaloy@le.utah.gov
Rep. Norman K. Thurston (R), Vice Chair - 801-477-5348 - normthurston64@gmail.com
Rep. Walt Brooks (R) - 435-817-3530 - wbrooks@le.utah.gov
Rep. Jennifer Dailey-Provost (D) - 385-321-7827 - jdprovost@le.utah.gov
Rep. Phil Lyman (R) - 435-459-2800 - plyman@le.utah.gov
Rep. Michael J. Petersen (R) - 435-770-6925 - mpetersen@le.utah.gov
Rep. Val L. Peterson (R) - 801-224-4473 - vpeterson@le.utah.gov
Rep. Candice B. Pierucci (R) - 385-414-1488 - cpierucci@le.utah.gov
Rep. Stephanie Pitcher (D) - 385-272-8032 - spitcher@le.utah.gov
Rep. Steve Waldrip (R) - 801-389-9329 - swaldrip@le.utah.gov
Rep. Douglas R. Welton (R) - 385-999-0403 - dwelton@le.utah.gov
You can read the bill here.
This bill provides six major security protections. You can never be 100% secure but these measures add security while maintaining ease of voting.
1. Removes universal mail-in ballots.
Q. Why would we want to remove universal mail-in ballots? Isn't it convenient to just mail in your ballot? Won’t removing universal mail in ballots make it harder for some groups to exercise their right to vote.
Universal mail-in balloting is where every active voter on the voter roll is mailed a ballot.
This creates an issue when clerks are mailing out ballots to people that are not at an address anymore.
Just this week in a senate committee hearing, the Cache County Clerk said 6% of the ballots they mailed out were returned as undeliverable. That is about 7000 ballots alone (based on the population of Cache County).
Universal mail-in ballots only provide a signature match to verify the voter that cast the ballot is the one that registered to vote.
This bill still allows some mail-in ballots. In this case they are referred to as absentee ballots. This allows for someone to apply to receive a mail-in ballot for an election due to a disability, age, anticipated hospitalization, or medical treatment, or if the individual will be outside the state during the election.
It’s up to you to make up your own mind on mail-in ballots, but we don’t think it is worth the security risk. We have very little say in today’s political climate, and we want our vote to count.
2. Requires that county clerks post a photo of your ballot on the ballot tracking website.
Q. Is it secure to post my ballot online? Ballots are supposed to be secret, right? Won’t this violate my privacy?
This is one of the best parts of the bill. The ballots are required to have what is called a "short code" on them.
This short code is unique on every ballot but is not tied to voter information.
You will be able to note the short code when you vote and then later type it in on the Utah ballot tracking website to not only see the status of your ballot, but to also see an image of your ballot.
This way you can ensure that your ballot was counted as you cast it.
3. Prevents someone from possessing another voter’s registration form.
Q. Won’t this cause issues with registration drives and getting people to vote?
This part of the bill makes sure that someone cannot possess or submit a voter registration form that is not theirs unless it is someone like a family member.
This is meant to help prevent people from ballot harvesting, where people are paid to gather registrations from those that are not already registered.
We believe that due to the fact you can register to vote in person at the clerk’s office, on voting day at the polling location, at the DMV when renewing a driver's license, or online at vote.utah.gov, that people have many options that don’t include someone registering for you. That includes registration drives where a political action group or private entity holds an event to increase registrations.
More people registered does not necessarily mean more people voting.
In some cases, it may add additional risk of fraud to have people on the voter rolls that don’t vote, because a malicious person could use that to submit a vote in someone’s name. Especially with mail-in voting.
4. Prevents county clerks from counting votes before polls close.
Q. Don’t we want the clerks to start counting as soon as possible so we can find out who is elected to office?
Allowing counting to happen earlier than when polls close increases risk of fraud.
As the ballots are tabulated, you begin to get an idea of who may be the winner.
At that time, a malicious person may have the ability to inject additional ballots into the count.
Starting the count after polls close reduces the amount of time someone may have to adversely affect the turnout by either adding ballots or convincing people not to go vote because their candidate is not going to win.
Counting early is convenient for the clerks, but we believe that our elections need to prioritize security over convenience.
More Security = Less Convenience. You need to make a decision on how much you value your vote and how many security measures you are willing to accept to make sure it counts.
5. Requires that official ballots have a light-sensitive watermark and foil stamp.
Q. Won’t that cost the taxpayers extra money?
Truthfully, yes it will cost extra money. But this will be a small tradeoff for the ability to stop counterfeit ballots from being counted.
The ballots we use now don’t have any security features in them except that the scanners take a specific format of printing. If the printing is off, the ballot is separated to be looked at by a person to ensure the ballot is real.
The problem is that the ballots are printed with regular laser jet printers at polling locations. Mail-in ballots are printed out of state. They are easily counterfeited by anyone that has access to cardstock, a sample ballot, and a laser printer.
6. Requires that each general election is audited by an independent auditor.
Q. Won’t that be expensive? I heard that the Arizona 2020 audit was expensive.
The independent audit required by this bill is not on the scale of the Arizona audit.
However, it does require an audit that is more thorough than what we have now.
More eyes on the process is never a bad thing. Especially when the person looking at it doesn’t have any skin in the game.
This audit will be reported to the Lt. Governor’s office and the legislature so that they may address issues found in future legislation and County Clerk Operational Standards.
The above six points are captured nicely in this video. It is about ten minutes in length.
Again, please do the following:
1. Share this message with your family, friends, and colleagues.
2. Urge members of the House Government Operations Committee to support this bill.
Send them an email today.
Text them tomorrow at four o'clock.
3. Join other election integrity advocates at the Capitol tomorrow afternoon at 3:30, and then attend the committee meeting in person; or, join the committee meeting via Zoom.
Appreciatively,
Secure Vote Utah
