Wyoming Secretary of State Ed Buchanan is seeking the help of U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis to oppose efforts to give the federal government more control over elections nationally.
In recent days, President Joe Biden has endorsed changing the rules of the Senate to make it easier for the Senate to pass two pieces of election-related legislation. One, the “Freedom to Vote Act,” would establish national voting rules to replace the state rules that now govern elections. The other, the “John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” is described by backers as establishing a way to review voting rules nationally with an eye toward those that discriminate against voters.
Buchanan asked Barrasso and Lummis to stand firm in their fight against both measures, saying it is disingenuous to accuse Wyoming of adopting rules such as a voter ID requirement as a way to suppressing voters.
“To suggest that state action to strengthen our election security is ‘directly linked’ to the January 6, 2021 events is slanderous and is a political lie to the American people,” Buchanan said in a letter to the senators. “In Wyoming, we worked for years, well prior to the 2020 election, to implement legislation such as ‘Voter ID,’ until it finally passed. Simply put, Republicans want every eligible voter to vote and every ineligible voter to not vote. In summary, ‘easy to vote, hard to cheat.'”
There was little evidence of voter fraud in the state prior to the voter identification law being passed during the 2021 legislative session.
Buchanan also said that Wyoming voters deserved elections run by those sensitive to the needs of the state, not people in Washington, D.C., who are seeking a “one-size fits all” approach.
He concluded his letter to the senators by noting that “decentralization is essential to the protection of our elections at a time when integrity and security are foremost on the minds of all Americans.”
