SALT LAKE CITY — Postcards have been popping up in Utah mailboxes notifying people of a change in voter identification laws starting Saturday. Many have reached out with concerns about the new requirement, which states residents need to release information like their mailing address and age.
“Well, I think it's always important to canvass your district,” said Katharine Biele, President of the Utah League of Women Voters, “but if a person is concerned about privacy, I think that is something that the legislature needs to pay attention to.”
Biele said she has concerns about the new requirements.
“About 320,000 voters will be affected by this,” said State Board of Elections Director Ryan Cowley.
Cowley said around 30% of registered voters will be notified of the change which will permit qualified requesters to access non-identifying information. Voters in the "withheld" category is where Cowley said things gets complicated.
He said around 15 years ago, the law changed where anyone could request to keep all information private from candidates, campaigns and political parties. That changed in 2020, when only those with a certain reason to be kept private, like judges, domestic violence survivors and police officers were able to be completely private.
Others who requested to be private before the change were grandfathered in. Now, because of a new house bill, those voters will have to release some, but not all information.
“Basically, their name and things like that anonymized; but things like their address, party affiliation vote history will now be given out to the political parties and candidates,” explained Cowley.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Norman Thurston (R) says the private, or withheld voters, not sharing any information was impacting the campaigning process.
“We got to a situation where in some voter areas, as many as 30-40% of voters, the candidates in the political parties couldn't find anything about them, like nothing at all," he claimed. "Their records were completely suppressed, which made it very difficult to do voter engagement."
As for concerns with sharing mailing addresses, Thurston says that shouldn’t be a problem for registered voters.
“I will only be able to know that house, there's a registered voter. That house, there's a registered voter, but I won't know that that is Ben or that's Jenny or I won't be able to know any of that,” he said.
Bible said she understands the need for transparency, but also hopes it doesn’t impact voter turnout.
“Of course, we are always concerned about privacy, but more importantly, we are concerned about any barriers to voter participation and if this creates any new barriers, we will be watching,” she said.
