This week a Denver, Colorado, attorney and Washington D.C. law group filed a federal-court complaint in Wyoming on behalf of Equality State Policy Center.
The lefties brought their big-time friends from out of town, to try to abolish the voter integrity bill passed this year, that requires proof of citizenship and residency to vote.
This isn’t the first time people have spent big money to fight voter integrity laws. In 2022, a Democratic super PAC announced a $15 million campaign to “fight voter suppression.”
The PAC, Priorities USA, took money from George Soros and others. Former Obama White House staffers started the group after the 2010 midterm elections, spending $66 million in 2012 elections and another $117 million in 2016.
I wonder who is funding this little bit of fun in Wyoming?
The political Left and Center have both railed about conservatives working with the Freedom Caucus and those “darn out of staters” who don’t know how we do things around here.
Nonetheless, you could expect the national Left’s money to pour into Wyoming after we were the first state to pass our equivalent of President Trump’s SAVE Act Executive Order.
The Wyoming law being challenged, House Bill 156, requires a qualified elector to be a bona fide resident of the state of Wyoming for at least30 days before the date of the election in which they offer to vote, and requires documentation proving residence to register to vote. It also prohibits registration based on documentation showing noncitizen status.
The legal challenge to HB 156, presented in the civil lawsuit complaint, is that it is unconstitutional voter disenfranchisement when the state requires proof of residence and citizenship.
The complaint’s overarching theme appears to be that women and minorities are too stupid to follow the law.
“When HB 156 becomes effective on July 1, 2025, it will impose new, burdensome, and entirely unnecessary requirements that will make it harder for eligible citizens to vote—including, in particular, women,” says the second paragraph.
“Women—as well as Hispanic, young, and low-income voters—are less likely to have acceptable documentation and, in many cases, face greater hurdles to obtaining it,” the complaint adds.
I disagree.
I think we are all born with a brain in our head and two hands capable of working. It’s a controversial concept these days, I know.
But I don’t believe any of us are born with an insurmountable advantage or disadvantage based on our appearance or how much money we had growing up. Thus far, we’ve had an African American president; and a vice president who came from poverty, violence and drugs, who have proven my thesis true.
Can we move on from the idea that some of us are, somehow, inherently destined to be disadvantaged fools?
The United States Supreme Court has already addressed these issues. Justice Stevens, writing for the majority, previously concluded that the photographic-identification requirement “impose[d] only a limited burden on voters’ rights.”
The high court also found that “safeguarding voter confidence” is a prime example of government purposes worth protecting calling this idea “legitimate” and “important,” even though the record in that case contained no evidence of any voter fraud actually happening.
Most importantly, the Supreme Court decided that when there is limited evidence of a burden on the right to vote, the state need not present concrete evidence to justify the law.
“Many people will not realize they need this documentation until it is too late and will be disenfranchised altogether,” this new complaint speculates.
But I can’t join the military without these documents. Actually, you can’t enroll your kid in school without these documents. So yes, to vote in an election, you should have to prove you are a citizen who lives where you are voting. This isn’t a burden; it is a proper election in America and it is common sense.
Do they want access to a voter population so misinformed, its members can’t locate their identification? Do they believe these people are easily activated and controlled through emotions that divide us? Maybe decrying “disenfranchisement” helps them save face when someone like Kamala Harris loses? Maybe this is all something more sinister.
Whatever it is, it defies reality.
Women and minorities are not too stupid to follow the law. We should mistrust the intentions of people who insist we are.
The Left appears conflicted on women, as if we were only a means to an end: Take our sports, our definitions and our dignity – but moralize about women’s rights when we’re asked to get our voting documentation in order.
Cowboy State Daily columnist Cassie Craven is a University of Wyoming College of Law graduate who practices law in Wyoming. She can be reached at: longhornwritingllc@gmail.com
