GOP-dominated Utah embraces mail voting despite party rhetoric
Deidre Henderson watched in surprise as her party waged one attack after another on mail voting in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
For the better part of three years, Republicans, led by former President Donald Trump, have repeated claims that mail voting is unsafe and ripe for fraud. GOP leaders took aim at mail voting in state legislatures and the party’s new House majority drafted legislation to rein in the practice.
Only in June did the Republican National Committee launch an official campaign to encourage early voting — including by mail — ahead of the 2024 presidential election. It was a welcome, if overdue, shift in the narrative, according to Henderson, the top election official in Utah, a Republican-led state that has long-since embraced mail voting as a safe and secure way to cut costs and increase voter participation.
“I'm glad the RNC is finally encouraging people to vote early, because I was truly baffled by all of these attacks by the Republican Party to suppress their own votes,” said Henderson, the state’s lieutenant governor.
Mixed messaging from GOP leaders coincided with lower rates of Republican mail voting in the 2020 election and losses in the 2022 midterms. Since then, the party has begun to rethink its stance on mail voting.
https://rollcall.com/2023/08/16/gop-dominated-utah-embraces-mail-voting-despite-party-rhetoric/