If you haven’t voted in four years, you may not automatically get a ballot in the mail.
Voter registration can expire, and the way to check and renew it is by visiting vote.utah.gov.
Summit County Clerk Eve Furse is mailing out ballots Oct. 15 and starts gathering addresses well before that.
“In four years, a lot can change, and we may or may not get notice of that,” she said.
People who don’t vote in two consecutive elections and who don’t do something e that verifies their voter status—like signing a petition or renewing their driver's license—become “inactive voters.” Although they’re still registered for in-person voting, they won’t receive a mail-in ballot.
Furse recommends voters double check both their mailing and physical addresses on vote.utah.gov. The physical address is important because it determines which local elections someone is eligible for.
Voters can return their ballots to the clerk’s office either through the mail or by placing them in drop boxes across Summit County.
Officials from the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors expressed concern about the anticipated volume of ballots in a letter to the postmaster general Sept. 11.
They worry that the U.S. Postal Service may disenfranchise voters if it can’t or takes too long to deliver ballots. No Utah elections officials signed onto the letter.
Furse said that Summit County’s mail system is relatively isolated from the rest of the country’s. The farthest that ballots would need to travel is to a USPS facility in Salt Lake City and back.
“We had extremely high turnout in 2018 and in 2020, and we had pretty high turnout in 2022 as well, and have had good success with that. We haven't had problems,” she said. “I don't have reason to think that [this election] will be different for our county.”
But she does recommend getting ballots in early. That way, her office can provide the most complete results possible on election night.
Election night is Nov. 5.
