Isaac Hale, Daily Herald file photo

During this year’s primary elections, which were last week, Utah County voters utilized ballot drop boxes more than usual and had an overall turnout rate of just under 41%.

This year’s primary election included heavily contested Republican races for the U.S. Senate and Utah’s 3rd Congressional District, as well as contests for various statewide offices and state Legislature seats.

This year’s voter turnout was slightly higher than the 2022 primary, which had about 37%, but lower than the 2020 primary, which had about 53% turnout in the county.

This year, Utah County eliminated prepaid postage for its mail-in ballots, with Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson saying the decision was to encourage use of drop boxes or in-person voting over mail-in as well to as save the county money on postage. The county has provided postage in the past but state law does not require counties to do so.

According to data released by the county, about 77% of voters who used mail-in ballots returned them via a drop box. The remaining 23% returned ballots through the U.S. Postal Service. About 21% of ballots returned through USPS did not have a stamp.

Carlene Coombs, Daily Herald

Federal guidelines direct the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots even if the ballots do not have postage attached, with USPS able to charge the county for the postage after delivery.

About 3.5% of votes cast were through in-person voting, with a significant majority being on Election Day.

Davidson said his office didn’t have data broken down by voting method from past midterm and presidential election years, but he said the use of drop boxes and voting in person had increased.

Davidson attributed the increase in drop boxes and in-person voting to a push from him and his office to get voters to use those voting methods.

“It’s because I feel that I kind of promoted the use of the drop box and voting in person in Utah County, and it worked,” he said.

Voting instructions found on Utah County mail-in ballots this year told voters that postage is required and said to use a drop box to save money.

“Postage is now required when returning ballots through U.S. Postal Mail, and they must be postmarked no later than June 24, 2024,” the instructions read. “We encourage you to save the postage by using a county-provided drop box conveniently located in each city.”

Nearly half of the ballots dropped in drop boxes weren’t returned until the day of the election, with Davidson saying his office picked up more than 36,000 ballots from the boxes that day.

Davidson said he initially was worried that voter turnout was running low leading up to the election, but the data showed a lot of last-minute visits to the drop boxes.

“We were worried that our turnout was low, but it was because people were waiting,” he said. “They wanted to vote close to Election Day, and so I thought we had a really good, decent turnout in a very successful election.”

Statewide data from the Lieutenant Governor’s Office released June 24, the day before the election, showed that Utah County had a 16.6% turnout at that time, which was before many ballots were returned to the drop boxes.

Davidson said they didn’t expect that many ballots to be received on the final day of the election, with volunteers and employees having to do a second drop box pickup late that night.

Going into the general election, Davidson said he’s excited to see how the turnout goes, adding that his office is going to prepare to potentially have a significant amount of last-minute ballots.