To stamp, or not to stamp?

A Salt Lake Tribune reader emailed us recently to ask about postage policies on mail-in ballots after noting their ballot asked for a stamp. And it’s true — by any count, most of Utah’s counties ask voters to use a stamp to send their mail-in ballot back to election offices to be counted.

Where in Utah, exactly? Well, a legislative fiscal note in 2023 noted that 23 of 29 Utah counties required voters to affix postage, though it’s clear multiple counties have changed procedures before and since. But Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson’s office, which manages statewide elections, said it doesn’t keep an updated list of which counties require stamps on ballots.

We do know, though, that 2026 voters should pay in Iron, Millard, Rich, Utah, Washington and Weber counties, while the postage is prepaid in Cache, Grand and Salt Lake counties. If you have information about another county’s rules in 2026, please let us know by emailing me at alarsen@sltrib.com.

Still, the discussion is largely academic for the average voter. That’s because the U.S. Postal Service will deliver your ballot to the right place — even if it doesn’t have a stamp.

“Election officials are required to inform voters of the amount of postage required, if applicable,” Sherry Patterson, a postal service spokesperson, told me.

But wait!

“If a return ballot is nevertheless entered into the mailstream with insufficient or unpaid postage,” she said, “it is the Postal Service’s policy not to delay the delivery of completed absentee balloting materials, including mail-in ballots.”

So what happens then? “In cases where a ballot enters the mailstream without the proper amount of postage,” Patterson said, “the Postal Service will deliver the ballot and thereafter attempt to collect postage from the appropriate Board of Elections.”

I asked officials from Weber and Utah counties, two Wasatch Front counties that require voters to send postage, what they do with unstamped ballots.

“If we receive a ballot back through the USPS that does not have return postage, we absolutely will process that ballot just as if it had returned postage,” Weber County Clerk/Auditor Ricky Hatch said. “We don’t want any voters to not vote because they don’t have the means or ways to purchase postage. … We want voters to have as many options as possible to cast their ballot.”

Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson doesn’t necessarily agree.

“Yes, [ballots with no postage] will still be processed,” Davidson wrote in an email. “However, the USPS does not guarantee that ballots will be delivered in a timely manner. In the primary election this last June, we identified one ballot that took 18 days to reach us and another that took 20 days after being postmarked in Salt Lake City. After the incident in Eagle Mountain, where 300 to 500 ballots were found disposed of in a dumpster, I do not have full confidence in the USPS. I strongly encourage all voters to vote in person or use the county-provided drop boxes to ensure every ballot is received and processed properly.”

So why don’t some counties pay for the postage?

It could be a budget concern — Davidson said the cost was a “substantial amount” in 2024, and the state estimated it would cost all of Utah’s counties roughly $723,000 to pay postage for all voters under a bill proposed by state Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake City, in 2023.

But it could also be a political concern, as noted by former Utah County Clerk Amelia Powers Gardner. Regarding Davidson’s decision to ask voters to pay for postage on ballots, Gardner told KSL, “This is a policy decision, and this is him purposely trying to make it so that people don’t mail their ballot in because he doesn’t prefer vote by mail.” She noted that Utah County had set aside the budget for postage, which Davidson chose not to use.

Davidson lost his reelection bid in June’s Republican primary.

Republicans around the country have advocated for mail-in voting to be curtailed, citing President Donald Trump’s claim that mail-in ballots lead to fraud. PBS News pollsters found that enthusiastic Donald Trump voters were also concerned about the legitimacy of mail-in voting, while other groups largely do not feel fraud is common in the procedure.

Mail-in voting was the subject of a $100,000 legislative study, the findings of which Utah lawmakers received Wednesday. The study found that neither “in-person or mail voting is inherently more secure.”