House lawmakers passed a bill Friday to slightly expand a pilot program aimed at getting more voters to participate in Utah elections.
Utah had one of the nation’s worst turnout rates in the last election.
Now some counties have opted to take part in a three-year experiment that allows voters to register and vote on election day. Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Sanpete and Kane counties haves seen more than twelve hundred additional voters cast ballots through the program.
“The processes are in place,” says Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake City. “It was just an oversight on our part that we didn’t include early voting last year.”
Her bill to allow voters in participating counties to register and cast ballots on early voting days, too, passed on Friday. The vote was 63 to 2.
Chavez-Houck says lawmakers will have a chance to evaluate the idea after this year’s local elections and next year’s presidential and gubernatorial elections. She says some interesting trends are emerging.
“It’s across the gamut,” she said.” Yes, predominately our younger voters 18-24 are the ones that are participating in election-day registration. But there is a good breakdown across the demographic spectrum.”
Sen. Deirdre Henderson, R- Spanish Fork, will sponsor the measure in the Senate.
