The election is over, and our state representatives are turning their attention to the legislative projects they hope to push. An area get attention is electoral reform. The proposal currently circulating largely targets mail-in voting and the pathways to the primary ballot. While our choices could always benefit from continuous improvement, these measures are misguided.

One proposal aims to require voters to request a postal vote. Another would limit who is eligible to vote by mail, while the most dramatic seeks to end returning your ballot by mail altogether. Another proposed reform would create an appointed secretary of state to oversee elections in place of the lieutenant governor’s office. Finally, there is support among some lawmakers for legislation that would allow candidates to bypass party primaries if they win a significant share of delegates at party conventions. Many of these proposals would unnecessarily weaken our system autonomy at a time when Utah is a national example of running good elections, in large part because of past reforms.

When HB 172 passed in 2012, Utah counties could choose to use an all-mail system where each registered voter received a ballot by mail that they could return through the postal system or in person. The entire state adopted this system in 2019, making Utah one of the pioneers in this method that now has spread throughout the country. The last election gave more evidence that mail-based elections increase turnout while making it easier to vote.

Preliminary results shows that about 85% of Utah voters cast ballots by mail. A recent Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics voting conducted by HarrisX indicates that 75% of Utahns, including 72% of Republicans, have some degree of confidence that mail-in ballots are being counted correctly. Actual evidence fraud in Utah through the postal system is limited to a handful of cases. This comes amid rising voter turnout, which reached a record high of 90% of registered voters in 2020 and is likely to remain high.

As the Deseret News Editorial Board has statedthe proposed reforms to the postal voting system “attempt to solve a problem that does not exist.” The actual effect would be to hurt participation by making voting more difficult and less accessible for no discernible gain. Concerns about postmarks, signatures and even voter ID for postal voters could be addressed while leaving the universal mail-in system intact, but many of the proposals currently being considered miss the mark.

In particular, the proposal to create a secretary of state post to oversee the election, as well as the one to exclude candidates with a supermajority of convention delegates from the primary process, are troubling both in their motivation and effects.

Legislators in favor of the change to a secretary of state system cited allegations of conflicts of interest on the part of the lieutenant governor in the gubernatorial race as justification. But the complaints of those who lost an election should not be misconstrued as evidence of a real problem. Certainly they should not be the motivation for a major change to our electoral system that will expand government at taxpayer expense.

Similarly, the initiative to allow candidates to bypass the primary appears to be motivated by complaints from individuals who lost their primary race after winning the Republican convention. But these individuals lost simply because they weren’t popular enough with the broader Republican electorate, which is how the system should work. This change would dramatically weaken turnout by shutting out primary voters while protecting candidates from competition if they can win over a few thousand delegates.

Changes to increase transparency to qualify for the vote are welcome. But other reforms should focus on making it easier for more candidates to get involved and more inclusive of the broad electorate. The proposed reforms do the opposite.

It is always worth striving for better choices and strengthening participation. But Utahns and our legislators would do well to remember that not all change is progress.