The Wyoming House made a loud and clear statement Thursday about how voters can — and can’t — turn in their ballots.
The House passed House Bill 131 on a 51-10 vote to ban the use of ballot drop boxes in Wyoming. The bill now moves on to the Senate for consideration.
During the 2024 election cycle, seven of Wyoming’s 23 counties offered ballot drop boxes, down from the nine that offered them in 2022.
Ballot drop boxes gained attention after the 2020 election, where many alleged they were a mechanism for ballot harvesting and fraud. There has been no evidence presented to this effect in Wyoming, where all of the drop boxes were under some form of video surveillance.
“These drop boxes are very secure,” said state Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander.
In addition, many of the state’s county clerks spoke in favor of keeping the boxes, which they said provided a valuable resource for voters who live or work many miles from their county courthouses and can’t get there during business hours.
Banning the boxes has been a cornerstone of Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s election security agenda and he has offered vocal support of the bill.
“I applaud the House’s passage of House Bill 131,” Gray said in a Thursday statement. “Banning ballot drop boxes has been a key priority to advance election integrity, ensuring voter confidence and transparency in Wyoming elections. I want to commend the House’s passage of this bill, which is a key priority of our election integrity reform agenda.”
Many opponents of the bill have said it will reduce participation in elections and that ballot drop boxes are a secure mechanism of voting.
There weren’t many of these points brought up during Thursday's floor discussion, however.
Amendments Rejected
An amendment was made to the bill in committee that required mail-in ballots to be only sent through the U.S. Postal Service.
For Wyoming residents stationed overseas in pursuits like the military, this would greatly increase the amount of time it will take for their ballots to get to the county clerks.
This amendment was removed in the House on second reading, but an amendment Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, brought Thursday to then try and clarify this piece was rejected.
Also rejected was an amendment brought by Larsen to continue allowing ballot boxes for special district elections, such as hospital and conservation districts. Larsen said his amendment was considering rural voters who only come into town occasionally.
“A lot of these (elections) are not the populace as a whole but focus on the rural citizens of county,” he said. “This is an effort to accommodate the ability for them to vote when they’re around the courthouse.”
Rep. Chris Knapp, R-Gillette, spoke against the amendment, saying the fact there’s a specific law for special elections “muddies the water” to provide boxes for only these elections.
No Student IDs either
The House also passed a bill banning the use of student IDs to vote in Wyoming.
Some like Gray have argued that student IDs aren’t official state-issued identification and do not properly identify whether someone is a U.S. citizen or not.
Rep. Trey Sherwood, D-Laramie, unsuccessfully brought an amendment that would have allowed the use of student IDs issued by the University of Wyoming.
Sherwood said the university is a government agency so therefore the IDs it issues are legal. She warned that outlawing student IDs would send a negative message about civic engagement to these students.
“I’m asking you to not disenfranchise our young Poke voters over the hill,” Sherwood said.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Reuben Tarver, R-Gillette, disagreed, saying it would be “a good lesson” for these students to get a state ID.
Knapp went even further, saying it should be harder than eating Cheetos on a couch to vote.
The bill passed on a 53-8 vote.
Contact Leo Wolfson at leo@cowboystatedaily.com
State Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander. (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily) 
Secretary of State Chuck Gray (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily)
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
