CEDAR CITY – SUU’s Michael O. Leavitt Center for Politics & Public Service put in several proposals to the Commission on Strengthening Utah’s Democracy to be considered for legislation in the upcoming session.

United States Ambassador to China and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. founded The Commission for Strengthening Utah’s Democracy to “examine … areas critical to Utah’s democracy and report back to the governor and Utah citizenry regarding its findings, conclusions, and recommendations,” according to the website www.strengthendemocracy.org.

Doug Larson, executive director of the Leavitt Center and legal counsel for the commission, said the commission’s purpose is to help bring voters out to the polls after Utah had showed consistent decline in voter turnout at general and primary elections for a period of several years.

“The Leavitt Center got involved because that commission asked me to be legal counsel and a consultant for them,” Larson said. “They asked me to help them understand the election laws as they currently are and the legal process for changing them.”

Larson said the students had already helped with a previous legal analysis project on elections laws so getting them involved seemed like a natural fit.

“The commission began looking for a way to determine which changes in the law would be most effective to improve voter turnout,” Larson said. “The students and I looked at many different possible ways that we could update, modify or improve our election laws.”

So far they have found four laws that they feel would be able to make a significant impact on local voter participation, Larson said.

The first laws the group looked at are the overseas military voting laws, currently a soldier has about 28 to 30 days to request an absentee ballot, register and then mail it in but the new laws proposed would allow online or faxed requests for registration of an absentee ballot and online or fax delivery for the absentee ballots themselves, Larson said.

“One of the things that we found doing our analysis was that registration could be a pain in the butt so we are trying to find ways to make that process easier,” Larson said. “The idea is that we are trying to reduce the barriers in registration so that voters can easily register and go to the polls.”

Larson said one way voter registration could be made more convenient is by allowing legal voters the ability to register the same day they vote while at the polls.

“Same day registration provisional ballots would count as voter registration, the information that you provide on that form will be used to register,” Larsen said. “They passed an I.D. requirement last year requiring some form of government-issued identification to be able to vote and that should eliminate chances for fraud.”

One important issue brought up by the SUU students was that of voter portability, meaning in a state full of college students it is difficult to vote when you are away from your home at school.

Larson said under new legislation voters could check a box when getting their driver’s license or filing state taxes that would opt them in to having their information updated automatically for you through a network of databases.

Finally the group is looking to have the availability of voter registration online.

“You would fill out the information online but you still have to send in an original signature,” Larson said. “You could print off the form, sign it and mail it in.”

According to information about the Nov. 3 election posted on the Iron County website, www.ironcounty.net, county-wide voter participation was 28.8 percent. There were 19,895 registered voters in Iron County.

For more information about The Commission on Strengthening Utah’s Democracy visit www.strengthendemocracy.org.