At the onset of the 2025 Utah Legislature, lawmakers listed changes to Utah’s election system as a top priority — but a major bill meant to drastically restrict voting by mail, HB300, has been stuck in the House for 10 days.

Utah Rep. Doug Fiefia introduced a bill that would eliminate same-day registration and require a mail-in ballot to be received by Election Day.

UVU professor Rick Griffin knows Washington; he’s spent the past decade researching material for a book about our first president’s administrations.

Native American advocates worry election reforms in front of the Utah Legislature would continue a legacy of discrimination.

Another bill introduced this week, SB296, sponsored by Sen. Chris Wilson, R-Logan, would let the governor appoint the chief justice of the Utah Supreme Court and the presiding judge of the court of appeals — both with confirmation by the Senate — rather than having the judges on the respective courts choose that top position among themselves.

Utah lawmakers moved to make it harder for candidates to put a nickname on the ballot after a candidate named Lucifer

Since 2022, nine GOP-led states have left ERIC, a voter data collective, amid such concerns as partisan influence, increasing costs, and a failure to address voter fraud.

A pair of bills moving forward would also change when injunctions can pause a law challenged on its constitutionaly, and who has third-party standing to file suit. Citing worries about the separation of powers, groups like the Utah Bar Association have opposed several of these changes.

Rep. Ryan Wilcox proposed a new bill, HB351, that would replace the state Columbus Day holiday with an Election Day holiday.

The Utah House voted along party lines on Friday to remove the state from the ERIC voter roll maintenance system after a debate over whether there was an adequate alternative in place.

The proposal comes despite the vast majority of Utah voters being confident in the current vote-by-mail system.

There are at least five public proposals to change Utah’s constitution being run by state lawmakers this year, and at least a total of 10 that could eventually