The Wyoming Secretary of State’s office on Thursday flagged three potential non-U.S. citizens registered to vote in the state – in Teton, Lincoln, and Carbon counties.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray sent notices to elected clerks in each county, notifying them of the voter records that match people the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services identified as non-U.S. citizens, according to a a statement from Gray’s office on Thursday.
The voter roll maintenance is in accordance with a new Wyoming law authorizing the state’s top election official to access the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system – a national database designed to help states verify voter citizenship.
“Only United States citizens and only Wyoming residents should be voting in Wyoming elections—period,” Gray said in the statement. “As Wyoming’s chief election official, we’re working diligently to ensure that Wyoming’s voter rolls are the cleanest in the nation.”
Gray also praised the Trump administration, which has backed the SAVE system.
Got Right On It
Teton County Clerk Maureen Murphy received the notice and prepared a letter to send to the person flagged in her county, she told Cowboy State Daily on.
That letter was sent either Friday afternoon or was slated to be sent Monday morning, she added.
“(The registrant) will receive a letter asking them to prove their citizenship,” she said. “If they do (within 20 days), great.”
Murphy said she’ll try other methods of contacting the person. If the person can’t prove citizenship, Murphy’s next step — under state law — is to turn the case over to the Teton County Sheriff’s Office, she said.
And if the sheriff believes after an investigation that the person voted illegally, then he’ll turn it over to the county attorney, the clerk noted.
These Whittle
The Idaho Secretary of State’s Office announced in October 2024 that it had flagged 35 “very likely” noncitizens in its voter rolls – out of more than a million registered voters.
Murphy noted that those numbers of possible non-citizen registrants can whittle down, however, if the voters themselves rebut the data with naturalization papers, for example.
“This is all potential,” she said.
The Idaho Secretary of State’s office could not be reached late Friday for comment.
It’s unclear how many of its 35 flagged registrants were able to rebut their scrutiny.
Wyoming’s three potential non-citizen voters are out of 274,487 total registered voters in the state, meaning the three are 0.001% of the total.
“That’s a pretty good percentage,” said Murphy. Still, she added, “I don’t want anybody who’s not eligible to vote, to vote.”
Lincoln County Clerk April Brunski said she learned of the potential noncitizen on her voter registry, and is investigating the voter’s qualifications to determine if state law calls for further action.
The Carbon County Clerk’s office did not respond to a phone message for comment by publication time.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
