Eight election bills have been approved by the Joint Corporations Committee for Wyoming's 2026 Budget Session. They'll need a two-thirds vote just to be introduced. All of them are being championed by Secretary of State Chuck Gray.
And the supporters get indignant when these are called voter suppression.
In the Navy, we used to say: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
Every time I hear "election integrity" attached to these bills, I hear quack. Not one shred of credible evidence supports the need for any of them.
Let's Be Clear About Something
If a thorough review of Wyoming's election laws and processes identified real risks, I'd be first in line to champion targeted, evidence-based fixes. That's how you build trust; with surgical precision, not a shotgun blast.
But that's not what's happening here. The experts on Wyoming elections are County Clerks and their staffs. They're not the ones asking for these changes. The Secretary of State is. The bills rest on assumptions, speculation, and conspiracy theories borrowed from out-of-state actors, not Wyoming data.
Here's what Wyoming's data actually tell us: The Heritage Foundation, often cited by restriction advocates, lists three fraud cases involving five people in Wyoming over the past 25 years. Three cases. Five people. Quarter century.
So what are we fixing?
Absentee Restrictions: Inconvenience Masquerading as Security
Two bills eliminate ballot drop boxes statewide and prohibit anyone but immediate family from returning your absentee ballot. No more asking a neighbor. No volunteer help. No campaign worker taking ballots to the clerk.
Ranch families who live 40 miles from town? Students without cars? Elderly voters who relied on a church group for help? They all lose convenience.
The justification? Fear that something might happen. Not evidence that something did. We're fixing a problem we don't have by making it harder for citizens to vote. That's not integrity. That's barriers.
Hand Counting: Trading Speed and Cost for Theater
Two more bills mandate random hand-count audits after every election and require hand recounts in close races.
Remember the 2024 Primary in Sheridan County? Results were delayed until midnight. Voters were furious about waiting.
Hand counting means days of delays, not hours. And here's the kicker: research shows hand counts are way less accurate than machine tabulation and dramatically more expensive. You get worse results for more money and more anger.
If you thought waiting until midnight for results was bad, imagine waiting until Thursday. And getting less accurate numbers for your patience.
Photo-Only ID: Solving for Headlines, Not Reality
Another bill removes student IDs, Medicare cards, and Medicaid cards from the acceptable voter ID list. Only photo IDs will work. These exceptions are already scheduled for sunset in 2029. No one has data on how many voters could be affected.
The problem being solved? In-person voter impersonation. The actual scope of that problem nationally? Thirty-one allegations out of one billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014.
When you chase ghosts, real people get hurt. In this case, it's students, grandma with her Medicare card, and disabled voters.
The Irony of Banning Solutions
One bill prohibits electronic ballot marking machines, the technology Laramie County voters overwhelmingly prefer.
Remember the ballot errors in Weston County's 2024 election? Electronic ballot marking would have prevented them. The accuracy of electronic marking exceeds manual ballots…. and avoids printing costs for ballots.
We're banning the solution to the last election problem we actually had. That's not cautious. That's backwards.
What This Package Really Reveals
These bills aren't responding to Wyoming problems. They're importing fear from cable news and 2020 conspiracy theories that collapsed in court. Courts found no outcome-changing fraud. The Dominion defamation settlements underscored how far machine-fraud stories drifted from evidence.
Confidence in elections has two halves: accuracy and access. These bills squeeze the wrong half. They restrict access to chase rare problems while County Clerks, the ones who run elections, get handed the workload without the funding.
The Call
Before your legislator votes to introduce these bills, demand real Wyoming evidence. Not conspiracy theories that didn't survive cross-examination.
Not glib claims that bad actors will negate your votes without any proof. Not unfounded concerns about what MIGHT happen. Actual Wyoming problems requiring Wyoming solutions.
If the answer is "peace of mind," that's a political goal, not an administrative one. It shouldn't come out of the clerk's hide or voters' access to the ballot.
Eight bills restrict voting based on no Wyoming evidence while the Secretary of State calls it integrity?
That's a whole flock of quacking.
Gail Symons can be reached at: GailSymons@Mac.com
