Speaker Schultz questions future of vote by mail following legislative audit reports

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Utah Speaker Mike Schultz questions the security of the state's vote by mail system.
Audits reveal issues with signature verification, including votes from deceased individuals.
Some election officials defend the system's security and highlight implementation issues.

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz questioned the future of Utah's vote-by-mail system after reviewing two legislative audits from the 2024 election cycle.

During a hearing of the Legislative Audit Subcommittee on Monday, Schultz, R-Hooper, and Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said they were concerned about the reliance of vote by mail on voter signatures.

An October audit by the Office of the Legislative Auditor General found that around 2% of signatures on primary nomination packets were incorrectly counted or rejected. An audit report released Monday found that signatures had been counted for multiple deceased voters and duplicate voters since the November 2023 election.

"I think the question comes, is vote by mail really as secure as in-person voting?" Schultz said. "And based off the audits we have in front of us, it's clearly not the case. And that's concerning to me moving forward."

'Do a better job'

Schultz pointed to the two cases where signatures of likely deceased individuals were used to vote in recent elections as evidence that vote by mail is not "every bit as secure as in person voting" because it would be much more difficult to commit impersonation fraud with a fake ID than to copy someone's signature.

Adams emphasized that the state's shift to universal mail-in ballots has placed an undue burden on county clerks who now have to verify thousands of signatures every election and reach out to voters in instances where there is not a match. There is also more opportunity for voter fraud using signature forgery than presenting a government ID in-person, Adams argued.

State Elections Director Ryan Cowley, who reports to Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, conceded that the audit results require his office and county clerks to "step up and do a better job." But he insisted that the current vote by mail system has sufficient security measures in place and argued that signature verification is accurate in the vast majority of cases.

The Legislature's Democratic leadership expressed worry of their own that some election officials who are not completely following state law would lead to the state losing its vote by mail system.

Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, said the problem is not Utah's election system — "We have enough safety mechanisms within our statutes." — it is improper implementation.

House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said she appreciated the "flags" raised by the audit and called on the Lieutenant Governor's Office to provide clearer and more forceful requirements for voter roll cleanup and post-election audits. But she worried the two audits will be used as "ammunition" by opponents of vote by mail.

"I have concerns that people are going to use this audit to try to eliminate vote by mail," Romero said. "I want to make sure we are encouraging people to vote and not discouraging people to vote. And I can tell you the way this conversation is going, I worry that we're going to put barriers there so people can't vote."

County clerks react to critical audit

Monday's legislative audit, based on observations from all 29 county election offices over the course of four elections, highlighted a lack of compliance among county clerks in conducting post-election audits, ensuring adequate surveillance and maintaining proper ballot controls. It also urged the Lieutenant Governor's Office to update its guidance for county election offices and to improve the accuracy of state voter rolls.

Washington County Clerk Ryan Sullivan, who entered office in the middle of election policy changes in 2023, said the Lieutenant Governor's Office has gone out of its way to provide detailed instructions and training opportunities for county clerks.

Sullivan acknowledged that confusion is possible when trying to follow a "fire hose of information to make sure you're not breaking the law," particularly in counties with smaller staffs. While Sullivan said as an election administrator he focuses on implementation, not policymaking, he recognizes signature verification as "probably the weakest point in voting by mail."

Davis County Clerk Brian McKenzie agreed that there are strengths and weaknesses to every voting system. But he also felt the need to clarify some of the statements from Monday's hearing that were critical of the vote-by-mail system.

McKenzie disagreed with the comparison of the two different signature verification processes for primary nominations and election ballots. A 2% error rate found in signatures on nominations — which McKenzie's office processed for statewide races — does not translate to a 2% error rate for signatures on ballot envelopes because they receive increased scrutiny by election workers, McKenzie said.

Cowley also made this point during Monday's hearing, arguing that state code requires election workers to give more deference for signatures to nominate a candidate for a primary election. However, state auditors responded by saying they had not observed any noticeable differences in the way signature verification was done between the two processes.

McKenzie also rejected the claim that vote by mail is less secure than in-person voting. Both methods incorporate two-step authentication that relies on human judgement, and so are subject to some amount of human error, McKenzie said.

Whereas vote by mail requires voters to receive a ballot envelope based on government identification and to provide a signature, in-person voting requires voters to provide their name and address and compare their picture to that found on government identification. Both methods rely on an election worker's judgement, McKenzie said.

"Do one of these methods provide a greater level of security over another one? The answer to that is no," McKenzie said. "They provide full measures of security. The measures are just different."

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify Davis County Clerk Brian McKenzie's views surrounding vote by mail.

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