The research on the turnout effects is still in the early stages. So far, though, no other reform can claim as much encouraging evidence as mail-based voting.The Utah analysis, which is being released Monday, follows a peer-reviewed study of Washington State that found voting-by-mail increased turnout by between two and four percentage points. In both states, turnout rose the most among groups that tended to vote the least, such as younger adults. Colorado and Oregon also have all-mail voting — and above-average turnout.

The practice is spreading, too. California is moving to all-mail voting this year. Parts of Arizona, Minnesota, North Dakota and other states have adopted it, too.

If your state or county still isn’t willing to switch, however, there are other ways to expand voting rights. Thanks partly to a push by the Brennan Center for Justice, 12 states have recently adopted automatic voter registration, and more are considering it. Automatic registration, which is the norm in much of the world, lets citizens become eligible to vote when they renew a driver’s license or otherwise interact with the government.

Another voting-rights push involves restoring the franchise for people who previously served prison sentences. Florida, Louisiana and Virginia, among others, have recently made progress here. Still other states have increased early-voting hours.

Expanding voting rights usually isn’t easy. It requires a dedicated political effort and consistent pushback against falsehoods and scare tactics. But when the effort works, it often proves enduring — because most Americans believe in the idea of universal, convenient voting.

Just consider what happened earlier this year in Utah County. That’s the county, you’ll recall, that includes part of Suncrest and didn’t use vote-by-mail in 2016. After officials there announced that the county would again require in-person voting in 2018, citizens and some local politicians became outraged and protested. They worried that they would have less of a political voice than other Utahans.

Voting by mail, Michelle Kaufusi, the mayor of Provo, explained, “gets higher voter turnout around here, and the whole idea of our system is to let ordinary citizens influence things through their votes.” Sure enough, the county eventually relented, and Utah County has joined the vote-by-mail revolution for this week’s primaries in Utah.