The following is partner content from: Wyoming Family Alliance.
Wyoming will choose its next governor on Tuesday, August 18. November 3 will confirm the choice.
Most Wyoming voters will show up for the confirmation but miss the choice.
That is not cynicism. It is arithmetic.
More than three of every four Wyoming voters are registered Republicans, according to the Secretary of State. That is 212,476 people out of 272,201. No Democrat has won a Wyoming governor’s race since 2006.
For most of the offices on your ballot, the contested election is the one in August. Yet in August, most of us are not there.
In 2024, 271,123 Wyomingites voted in the general election. Fewer than half that many voted in the primary. The gap is 148,405 ballots, more than the combined populations of Cheyenne and Casper.
We are not a state that refuses to vote. We are a state that votes too late.
The election most of us miss
Paul wrote Romans 13 to Christians living under Nero, telling them to honor governing authorities they had no hand in choosing. No vote. No representation. No recourse.
We have all three, and that adds gravity to our position. A say in who governs is a responsibility, and a responsibility has a deadline. Ours is Tuesday.
A third of the vote can decide it
Wyoming’s math is unforgiving. We have no primary runoff. A plurality wins outright, however small.
In 2018, our governor was nominated with 33.4 percent of the vote, meaning two of every three Republican primary voters preferred somebody else. In 2010, the nomination was decided by less than a single percentage point. In 2022, a sitting state representative lost his seat by twelve votes, the only Wyoming race that year to require a recount.
There is a second reason August carries the weight.
In a state this Republican, the letter after a candidate’s name tells you very little. Nearly every candidate wears the “R” because it is the only label that wins here. A label everyone wears is not information. The record is. And the record only counts in August.
Faithfulness is ours
The honest reason most of us skip a primary is not apathy. We do not feel prepared, and staying home feels more responsible than guessing.
That instinct is good and aimed in the wrong direction. The answer to “I don’t know enough” is not abstention. It is an hour of homework.
Fifteen minutes at Wyoming Family Alliance Action’s resource, WyoVoterGuide.com, builds your ballot, showing where each candidate stands on ten statements: their own words where they answered, the public record where they did not.
Still, none of it guarantees the result.
We must remember that God “removes kings and raises up kings.” Daniel wrote that from exile in Babylon, under a death sentence, with every earthly reason to believe otherwise.
Regardless of what Tuesday brings, it will not surprise Him.
That is not a reason to stay home; it is the reason we can go without panic. We are not asked to secure the outcome, only to be faithful with what is in front of us. This week, that is a ballot.
CONTACT
Gena Konrad-Cone gena@wyomingfamily.org
Wyoming Family Alliance Action wyomingfamily.org · WyoVoterGuide.com
