As distrust of voting machines continues in conservative circles in Wyoming and across America, Wyoming Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, is planning to bring legislation in the upcoming 2025 session that would clarify hand-counting ballots is legal in Wyoming.
“The reality is, people want to know they can trust their election system,” he said. “The current system has some flaws.”
Over the past few years and particularly this summer, there has been a growing movement for hand-counting ballots in Wyoming as opposed to using electronic vote tabulators.
Hand-count demonstrations have been popping up around the state, including one held at the Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee meeting earlier this month. Around that time, the state party also sued Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee for a technical mistake made in some of the testing of voting machines in her county.
In early October, a hand count demonstration will take place in Gillette with more than 1,000 mock ballots. Campbell County Clerk Cindy Lovelace told the Gillette News Record she’s interested in seeing how it goes.
“I’m not saying I support the process. My view on it is, because I know there’s a lot of talk out there, the only way to really know what the process would look like is to test it, then we’ll have the data to know whether it’s viable,” she said.
Many of these demonstrations are being organized around the state by Wheatland resident Jill Kaufman and Wyoming Voter Initiatives, a group with plans to enshrine hand-counted elections in law in the near future.
Last week, the Georgia State Election Board passed a rule requiring all of the state's voting precincts to hand-count ballots and ensure the tallies match machine counts before their deadline to certify election results.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray said he fully supports hand-count elections and will continue to advocate for them.
Gray has previously asked the Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee to examine post-election hand count audits and hand audits of ballots.
He also told Cowboy State Daily in July he’ll soon announce an internal working group that will include members of the public to study hand audits of elections “so that we can make clear in Wyoming state law that hand audits are required, because clerks are refusing to work with us to advocate for hand audits.
“I have always advocated for hand counts and hand audits of ballots to make our elections more secure and transparent,” he said.
Malcolm Ervin, president of the County Clerks’ Association of Wyoming and Platte County Clerk, said he’s happy to work with lawmakers on developing forms of hand counted audits, but stressed that this must be a team effort between clerks and lawmakers.
“We need to be brought into the fold early,” Ervin said. “I’m happy to talk about legislation, but there has to be good faith on either side. We have a great working relationship with Rep. Haroldson and I look forward to continuing that.”
What’s It For?
Haroldson said Wyoming law makes it clear that ballots are to be counted by machines. He wants to allow counties the flexibility to pursue hand-counting if they so choose.
“I want to open up an opportunity for checks and balances,” he said. “If something doesn’t seem quite right, they can call it into question.”
In the upcoming session, he’s considering bringing legislation that would allow counties to pursue a hybrid combination of voting machines and hand-counted ballots if they want, or even full hand-counting.
At the very least, he wants to give counties the opportunity to perform hand-counted audits of ballots that were counted in their election machines.
“I want it to be situational so if something happens, they have the ability to do a hand count if they find issues with the machines,” Haroldson said. “It’s a way of checking the accuracy of that system with another system.”
After former President Donald Trump mounted his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, many questioned the integrity of voting machines and made accusations that they had been hacked or could be easily done so.
None of these claims have ever been proven and Ervin said he has full confidence in the integrity of the state’s ES&S voting machines, but many like Haroldson simply argue that the fact that some of the machines technically could be hacked is enough cause for concern.
France processes its 45 million election ballots by hand count in its presidential elections, with the results returning the night of voting. Their elections are a bit different than America’s however, as residents there only vote on a single race for president, there is no Electoral College, and there is no mail-in voting.
Challenges
One of the biggest criticisms made about hand-counting ballots is the time it takes.
Ervin said the Wyoming requirements for the time that elections must be certified would absolutely have to be pushed back to accommodate any kind of hand-counting of ballots. Otherwise, counting would have to begin before the polls close, which Ervin said has been an unpopular proposal.
“The hand-count demonstrations have shown it’s not as time effective as the voting equipment, obviously,” he said.
Haroldson also acknowledges that hand-counting ballots may not be as feasible in higher population areas. Unless an incredible cadre of volunteers can be found, the task would likely take at least a full day in most Wyoming counties.
“Wyoming is the perfect place to do it,” he said. “We have a low number of votes compared to somewhere like inner-city Detroit. It’s not impossible there either, but certainly harder.”
Another challenge Ervin noticed at a hand-count demonstration performed in Wheatland this summer was how many errors were committed.
“There were people coming up to me saying it wasn’t the solution they thought it was,” he said. “Human beings are prone to being distracted. Humans are notoriously poor at repetitive tasks.”
Many have also expressed concerns that counters won’t count their ballots honestly because of their political biases. This problem could be mitigated by having multiple counters counting the same ballots, but conflict could ensue over shoring up any discrepancies.
“How do you cure disputes between election judges?” Ervin questioned. “It may seem simple, but a lot of ballots are just mismarked. The machines are supposed to take the objectivity out of it.”
Still, Haroldson suspects a few counties would go to full hand-counting of ballots if given the choice.
“It’s an opportunity for every single person to believe in the election system,” he said. “People should have the utmost trust that their ballot was counted fairly.”
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
