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Officials reported Wednesday that they are happy so far with a three-year experiment allowing Election Day voter registration — but what happens with it this presidential campaign year may determine whether it becomes permanent.

Mark Thomas, the state elections director, said every elected county and city official involved with the experiment in 2014 and 2015 favors continuing it.

"But the true test is yet to come," he told the Government Operations Interim Committee. "The true test is this year's presidential elections."

Thomas said many originally worried that the system might lead people not to register early, and create large lines at polling places.

That did not occur. For example, he said during the 2015 municipal general elections, only 323 people registered on Election Day in the 57 cities and towns that were participating in the experiment.

Republican Weber County Clerk-Auditor Ricky Hatch said he originally opposed Election Day registration because he had "visions of parties and candidates busing people into voting centers to vote for them in masses, jamming our polling places."

He said he changed his mind after the 2012 election when his county was forced to reject 700 ballots from people who had tried to register in a registration drive, but their forms had not been turned in on time.

"Hundreds of voters who did everything necessary to register in that election, and who otherwise met all of the statutory requirements, were disenfranchised because somebody else dropped the ball," he said.

Hatch noted that if that happened now, the people could use Election Day registration and still vote.

The three-year experiment with that system is set to expire after this year's election, unless lawmakers choose to extend it or make it permanent.

Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, co-chairwoman of the interim committee, said she isn't totally sold on the new system yet.

She worries that if it becomes permanent, the fear "about large bus loads of people coming down on Election Day to register could happen in the future because right now you're dealing with the fact that there's so many people who are already registered, and there's just a few who aren't."