Wyoming and Colorado share a border and a mountain range but no longer share a political culture.
Colorado legalizes recreational marijuana, enacts sanctuary laws, mandates transgender policies in public schools, and restricts firearms.
Wyoming chooses differently — deliberately, consistently, and by wide margins.
But voter will means nothing if vote recording cannot be verified. In Wyoming, that system belongs to Election Systems and Software (ES&S).
Colorado was not always this way.
A generation ago, both states shared ranching communities and constitutional conservatism.
Outside organizations poured tens of millions in dark money into legislative races and ballot initiatives, systematically flipping Colorado over fifteen years. Wyoming faces the same pressure.
In the 2026 primary, thirteen conservative House incumbents lost their seats.
We cannot say Wyoming's systems are compromised, but they are structured to make compromise possible, undetectable, and legally unprovable.
ES&S counts Wyoming's votes under a contract signed by an unelected interim Secretary of State in March 2020 without county clerk participation.
ES&S corporate history is a warning. Tracing back to American Information Systems (AIS), co-founded and chaired by Chuck Hagel, Hagel resigned as chairman in 1996, ran for U.S. Senate in Nebraska, and won an upset over Governor Ben Nelson — a Democrat leading general-election polls by double digits.
Hagel won by 14 points while AIS machines tallied an estimated 85 percent of the votes. Hagel never disclosed his financial interest in the company, counting the votes.
In 2002, his opponent formally requested a hand count. Nebraska law required recounts on the same ES&S machines, and the request was denied.
In 2006, ES&S machines in Sarasota County, Florida recorded an astounding 12.9 percent undervote rate in a congressional race decided by 369 votes, while surrounding counties averaged under two percent.
Over 18,000 votes vanished in one county in a single race. Surrounding counties proved voters were not to blame. The statistical gap is a mathematical impossibility under honest accounting.
The losing candidate sued. Congress held hearings. ES&S faced no criminal consequences. The machines moved on.
Then came the modem deception. Between 2000 and 2006, ES&S secretly installed remote-access software across at least 300 jurisdictions nationwide.
After years of public denials, the company admitted the truth in writing to Senator Ron Wyden in April 2018, refusing to identify the jurisdictions.
In March 2020, Wyoming's State Election Director declared systems air-gapped and promised they would never connect to the internet.
Yet witnesses confirm machines equipped with internet-capable modems were ordered for Wyoming.
The state instructed their removal, but because contracts prohibit officials from opening machines or inspecting internal hardware, there is no independent way to verify whether those modems are gone.
Beginning in 2024, cybersecurity expert Rick Weible, with twenty-eight years securing Department of Defense systems, examined Wyoming's infrastructure and identified severe vulnerabilities: antivirus and Windows updates ceased after June 2022; over 350 machines run on unsupported Windows 10; election definition files travel from internet-connected county computers onto USB drives via commercial SYSTOR duplicators; and contracts prohibit inspecting internal components.
Modern artificial intelligence amplifies this threat, allowing autonomous tools to probe unpatched systems, alter vote totals, and erase execution traces without detection. Wyoming's system invites compromise.
Imagine, a commercial airline contracts with a private maintenance company under an agreement signed by a temporary executive who departs.
Airline pilots and mechanics are contractually prohibited from opening engine cowlings or checking systems. By law, pilots must certify planes airworthy before every flight.
The last safety update of airplane software is from 2022. The private maintenance company secretly installs remote-access modems allowing it to alter or monitor cockpit gauges in real time, denying the installs until forced to confess by a United States Senator, then refusing to tell which planes have them.
Would you put your loved ones on that plane? Would you stake the sovereign future of the Wyoming you love on it?
That is Wyoming's election system: clerks are pilots, ES&S is the maintenance company, and we, the citizens of Wyoming, are the passengers.
On behalf of my clients, citizens concerned with election integrity, I am requesting the current ES&S contract from the Secretary of State's office, a request not yet fulfilled.
Publicly filed ES&S agreements from other states confirm consistent terms: ES&S retains inspection rights while county officials have zero reciprocal rights and opening a machine voids the warranty.
The state cannot investigate itself. The contract was procured under an interim Secretary of State, approved by the Governor, and reviewed by the Attorney General; no man can judge his own cause.
Because ES&S tabulates votes for nearly 44 percent of American voters, this is a national problem requiring a federal answer.
Formal referrals citing 52 U.S.C. Section 20511, 18 U.S.C. Section 1030, and Executive Order 13848 are being submitted by my clients to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, the Election Crimes Branch, the FBI, CISA, and the United States Attorney for the District of Wyoming.
Copies are transmitted to Senator John Barrasso, Representative Harriet Hageman, Attorney General Keith Kautz, and Secretary of State Chuck Gray for preservation and independent technical review.
Wyoming holds America's largest uranium reserves, vast energy in oil, gas, and coal, critical rare earth minerals, and huge data centers are here or on their way. Important decisions need to be made by Wyoming citizens on policy on many issues. Our election security is national security.
The remedy is simple: hand-marked paper ballots, publicly counted on election night by bipartisan citizen teams in every precinct.
A dedicated single-function optical scanner without internet connection can speed the process, but original ballots must remain for human verification, and any challenge must rely on human count.
An AI agent cannot infect a hand count; a compromised USB drive cannot alter a paper mark. No outside vendor needed.
Only Wyoming citizens acting in their sovereign capacity to secure their votes with control over their own destiny
Right now, Wyoming voters do not know if their votes are recorded or silently swallowed.
They cannot inspect tabulators, read software, or open machines. They are told to trust a private vendor with a history of concealment. Without verifiable elections, citizens are no longer sovereign.
Wyoming will not become Colorado North — not if citizens demand the right to count their own votes in the open, where every neighbor can watch and every ballot can be seen.
Fred Harrison can be reached at: Fred.Harrison@fjhlawoffice.com
