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Salt Lake Voter Rolls Swell As Balloting Begins

Julia Ritchey/KUER

Salt Lake County election officials will start shipping out general election ballots next week in what could be a record year for voting. 

Local voter rolls have swelled to more than 479,000 active registered voters so far. Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen says that’s a big increase from the last presidential election.

“On election day in 2012, we had just over 444,000 active registered voters, and so that’s an increase of over 35,000 voters since 2012,” says Swensen. “And we’re not even to election day yet. This number will continue to grow.”

Swensen says the uptick points to the potential for record turnout this year as Utahns are paying close attention to the presidential candidates at the top of the ticket. Statewide, voter registration is up about 6 percent over the same period in 2012.

“Definitely there’s an increase in population, but we’ve already seen enthusiasm in the political party caucuses in March,” she says. “We received thousands of forms as a result of that.”

This is the first general election in which voting by mail will be an option to all active voters in the county, making it even easier to vote. Twenty-one of Utah’s 29 counties are participating in vote-by-mail this cycle.

Tuesday is also the last day to register to vote by mail. But Swensen says there is still plenty of time to register online or in person at the clerk’s office before the November 1 deadline. 

Julia joined KUER in 2016 after a year reporting at the NPR member station in Reno, Nev. During her stint, she covered battleground politics, school overcrowding, and any story that would take her to the crystal blue shores of Lake Tahoe. Her work earned her two regional Edward R. Murrow awards. Originally from the mountains of Western North Carolina, Julia graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2008 with a degree in journalism. She’s worked as both a print and radio reporter in several states and several countries — from the 2008 Beijing Olympics to Dakar, Senegal. Her curiosity about the American West led her to take a spontaneous, one-way road trip to the Great Basin, where she intends to continue preaching the gospel of community journalism, public radio and podcasting. In her spare time, you’ll find her hanging with her beagle Bodhi, taking pictures of her food and watching Patrick Swayze movies.
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