A new Wyoming ballot initiative petition drive launched by Brent Bien, Cheryl Aguiar and Rich Weber seeks to require hand tabulation of votes in Wyoming elections.
Opinion
That’s an even worse idea than the other ballot initiative the trio is behind: One that would cut residential property taxes in half.
It probably won’t be hard to get hand-counting petition signatures, though. Former President Donald Trump has spent the past four years claiming without evidence he was the victim of massive election fraud in 2020. Many MAGA followers went apoplectic and still believe it, despite state and federal courts rejecting more than 60 election lawsuits.
Trump garnered 70% of the vote in Wyoming for his biggest margin of victory in any state. Gray, a former state lawmaker from Casper, based his winning 2022 Secretary of State campaign on the crazy notion Wyoming elections are fraught with unspecified “tremendous problems.”
Despite this supposedly widespread voter fraud, neither Gray nor the scores of other Wyoming Republican candidates who’ve won office since 2020 have expressed a scintilla of doubt about the results of their own races. Funny how that works.
Gray told the Park County Board of Commissioners that state law says each county’s board “may adopt,” either experimentally or permanently, in any election or all polling places within the county, any electronic voting system authorized by law.
Apparently, in Gray’s twisted logic, the use of “may” means that the boards could also decide to hand count all ballots.
He also seems to think making it harder for people to vote by banning ballot drop boxes would imbue our already perfectly secure and accurate elections with more “integrity.”
But Gray was rebuffed by the group representing Wyoming’s county clerks, who have rejected his argument that the boxes are somehow illegal because they are inanimate objects. (Mr. Secretary: So are mailboxes, and your office approves them even though they aren’t remotely as safe as ballot drop boxes.)
Jill Kaufman organized a recent election integrity event in Wheatland. She’s worried about votes being flipped and hacked, viruses or incorrect programming, the inability to see paper ballots up close and personal, and electronic poll books shutting down and losing registered voters’ information, according to reporting from Jasmine Hall of the Jackson Hole News&Guide. Her concerns were largely echoed by Rick Weible, a computer consultant who spoke at the event and claimed to have found an astonishing 1,878 “vulnerabilities” in Wyoming’s electronic voting equipment.
“So many people do not trust the system of electronic machines right now that they’re almost saying they’re not going to vote,” Kaufman said. “And that is just not acceptable.”
Of course, they don’t trust electronic voting machines: The former president, Wyoming’s top election officer and a flotilla of political operatives like Wiebel — who was involved with a similar hand-count push in neighboring South Dakota — having been telling them not to for years.
Advocates of hand counts contend they are cheaper, faster and more accurate than electronic equipment like the Election Systems & Software machines used in all 23 Wyoming counties, South Dakota and many other states.
In reality, according to many organizations that have done extensive research on both types of tabulations, hand counts are far more expensive, laboriously slow and contain more errors.
Here are a few of their conclusions:
Brennan Center for Justice — “In an experiment from Rice University using only 120 ballots, people counting by hand got it right only 58% of the time. Now imagine multiplying that by 100 or 1,000. As a Bipartisan Policy Center report put it, humans, unlike tabulation machines, are ‘notoriously poor at completing rote, repetitive tasks.’”
Voting Rights Lab — “Mandating election officials hand count every ballot is an extreme proposal that would be far more expensive, result in significant delays, and, most concerningly, lead to higher error rates and heighten voter concern over corruption.”
States United Democracy Center — Shasta County, California, conducted two mock elections to prepare for a hand-count election this year that was scrubbed. To process the county’s average of 53,000 ballots, each with at least 17 races and ballot propositions, would have cost an estimated $658,925 and required hiring 375 extra staff for the presidential primary alone. Wyoming’s last presidential election had nearly 280,000 ballots.
Gray supports an effort that has failed three times, most recently in April, to convince the five Republicans on the Park County Board of Commissioners to approve hand counting ballots. The Platte County Republican Party passed a resolution supporting the return of paper ballots and hand counting that was later approved by the state Republican Party.
That shows just how misinformed or disingenuous the state GOP is. Counties across Wyoming already conduct elections with paper ballots that are tallied by electronic counting machines. Votes on paper ballots are recorded on the scanner, and the paper ballots are securely saved for auditing and verification of results. Counties can track every ballot.
The machines do not have the hardware or software required to allow internet connectivity and are only accessible to authorized personnel like county clerks.
Wyoming law requires equipment to be tested prior to an election, and a post-election audit. Both processes are open to the public, but county clerks report that few attend. People with election integrity concerns should definitely take advantage of these opportunities to see how the procedures they claim are full of errors are actually used.
A statistical audit of the 2022 Primary Election verified that the electronic tabulation was 100% accurate.
I think 100% error-free should be enough proof of election integrity for even the most avid Trump loyalist, but then I remember I live in Wyoming and I realize it’s not. There will always be voters in Wyoming who don’t accept the results when their candidates lose. Heck, in Wyoming’s 2020 presidential contest, many clearly weren’t happy that Trump only outpolled Biden by 120,000 votes.
Weber, one of the Wyoming petition organizers, told a Wheatland audience the entire statewide count could be completed an hour after the polls close because only about 225,000 registered voters participate in elections and people could tabulate throughout the day.
Yes, sir, give everyone a ballot and let’s get counting!
Obviously, eliminating voting machines would be ridiculous. Please pay attention though to what happened in Weston County in 2024. The clerk made a mistake sending out old errant versions of the ballot along with the correct version. The mistake was noticed on election night when Chip Nieman hardly got any votes. He ran unopposed, but he received roughly 1,600 more votes than were counted on Election Day.
This should have been caught by the routine post election audit the next day. The Sec of State sends each county a spreadsheet with election results and serial numbers of specific ballots to be compared to the scanned ballot image. The Weston County clerk reported no problems, audit passed. This was false. It was later found that of 75 ballots to be checked, 21 did not match the results.
The problem was human error, apparently compounded by a human response of trying to sweep the mistake under the rug. The race was unopposed. It didn’t change the results, after all.
The problem with both hand counting and machine counting is that human error or malfeasance is possible. The solution, I believe, is machine counting with increased audits. It should not be difficult for voters to request audits or re-counts if they have concerns. Please do not discount the seriousness of the problems Chuck Grey and the Freedom Caucus group are bringing up. Sometimes they have a point. We need to listen to the concerns and help come up with sensible solutions.
Brent Bien is a retired Colonel from the Air Force and he believes the election was stolen. Let that fact sink in. A retired Colonel that believes the lies of 2000 Mules should set off alarm bells about the caliber of people admitted to the service let alone the officer corp or maybe his service somehow contributed to his cognitive decline?
Maybe I should not be shocked as Brent is from Wyoming and the Republican electorate also believed the lies of Chuck Gray who now claims he cares about election integrity. Chuck Gray and integrity should never be used in the same sentence. I find it sad that 2000 Mules resulted in about 75,000 fools to pull the lever for Chuck. Way to go WYO!
Wyoming: where moving back to the Stone Age is a major goal. How could people possibly be so stupid…
Unbelievable! “entire statewide count could be completed an hour after the polls close” How can anyone take Rich Weber seriously when he makes such an absurd statement. People, don’t listen to Chicken Little. The sky is not falling, and the earth is not flat. Use the brain that you were born with and think about the statements that are being bandied about. Compare those statements with what you know to be true. Then form an intelligent opinion and go from there. Enough already with the election fraud….move on.
The real problem with hand counting imho is how do you get workers willing to sit and count for long hours knowing that machine counting is so much faster and more accurate? Screw that noise.
This is a classic “bait and switch” story. The cheating in the 2020 election didn’t begin with miss-counting ballots; it began with many states’ governors and/or attorney generals ordering the mailing-out of millions of ballots without legal qualification. Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors……..” Note that it specifically states “the Legislature thereof…..” and NOT “the Governor or Attorney General thereof….” The illegitimacy of the last national election had little to do with counting!
There was no cheating.
You election deniers are running out of field since you’ve moved the goalposts so many times.
There wasn’t fraud. 2020 results were legitimate. Build a bridge and get over it. The absurdity you people show makes flat earth believers seem reasonable.
Elections are not valid when deceased people, non-residents, and non-citizens are not purged from voter rolls. Purging voter rolls is a time-consuming and difficult process, especially in those states where there are many millions of people. When statewide ballots are mailed to people who neither requested a mail-in ballot nor provided identification when registering to receive a mail-in ballot, people who are not legally allowed to participate in a federal election receive ballots. See how that works?
The standard auditing practices showed no issues on the scale you are proclaiming.
The earth is not flat. See how that works?
Lots of fun being made at the expense of hand-count proponents. That’s fine. What could be more productive is an explanation of the process and tests etc used to verify the current paper-machine-results system. I’ll have to ask my clerk about this. Might help some feel better about overall election integrity.
In 2020 there were 162 million registered voters in the USA. Imagine having to count all those ballots by hand. Presidential results would take months to count. After they were counted, then they would have to be audited, and if it was close, it would have to be recounted. By the time all that happened, it would be the next presidential election.
In Wyoming systems are not connected to the Internet and I know many states use those methods. There has been no fraud uncovered anywhere in our country Chuck Gray had nothing else to run on but voter fraud. 2000 mules give me a break. A work of fiction. If there was a voter fraud in Wyoming, how come the orange blob won by such a large margin?
There was no fraud anywhere. If there was fraud, shouldn’t President Biden have won Wyoming . If the machines are evil, then everybody should give up their cell phones their computers. Well, let’s just give up electronic devices. I guess we should go back to before cars were invented. Let’s Go back before the industrial revolution.
To all the election deniers out there, get a life. There is no evidence there was any fraud anywhere, particularly in Wyoming. Let people vote. Ballot drop boxes are easier for older people to use. Mail in ballots are fine.
Hand counting has been proven to be very unreliable. What if the person counting is committing fraud. So. Here is how I hand counting. One person counts the votes. Then to make sure that person is right and not riddled with fraud another person has to count the votes. If the outcome is different another person has to count it. At a
Minimum the have to verify the count. If the numbers different then it has to be counted again. Once the number match it then has to be audited. If it is wrong then who counts it. A quality control manager has to oversee the whole thing.
No one even talked about voter fraud until the great orange blob said that it was fraud. If he wins this next election, we should all call it fraud. Based on what the Supreme Court just said, Biden could overturn the election and say it was not fraud at all. Let’s have another insurrection. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 .
Then Biden can pardon himself and pardon anybody that was involved.
Please, People of Wyoming when you go vote think about it long and hard. The radical right is definitely wrong.
Until we remove the current voting machines and replace them with open source programmed machines, we need to go back to hand counted paper ballots, regardless of their flaws.
The county clerk of Austin TX worked with Silicon Valley to produce an open source voting machine (anyone could view the programming) whereby the voter could return to the machine and view her/his vote to be certain it was not changed. Congress, both parties, rejected it.
Instead both parties opted for closed source machines that are “secret.” And anyone who attempts to see the source coding is prosecuted.
Smells like a skunk in the woodpile to me. And if it smells like a skunk, there is probably a skunk in the woodpile.
I’m sure there’s a skunk somewhere….there’s just gotta’ be. I mean if something is supposed to look like a skunk then it must needs be smell like it, so let’s all sleep easier knowing that suspected skunks are alive and well.
And Italians in Italy can change votes by using their digital thermostats.
Your theories are ridiculous and lack anything that resembles intelligent thought. GIGO
We should get all the naysayers in a room with roughly 300,000 pennies on the floor and make them count them by hand. This is a little more than the total ballots cast in the 2020 election. Each doubter has to count them by themself. When they are done, we compare the results from each person to the results from a bank change counter. The change counter is faster and more accurate. That is why the banks use them. The same with modern electronic voting machines. They are easier to audit than hand counting.
Not a room, but 20 rooms, each with 300,000 pennies. This would represent the 20 or more candidate and issues that show up on the typical ballot.
All the hand counting advocates have never even seen that being tried. Wyoming Republicans live in an alternate reality. Like their leader, they are likely to fly into a rage if the task is not done immediately and , somehow done at no cost. Managing a nand-counting effort greater than 1,000 ballots is a LOT harder than doing their version of “managing” ranches.
The Wyoming legislature and Executive Branch do not to seem to mind to spend a lot more money as long as it is not “their money” (i.e. state tax dollars which the legislature thinks they own). So, Kerry, the real question is who is going to pay for the hand-counting, and who is going to pay for the inevitable auditing, as the “hand-counters” may be more partisan than all would prefer? Not the politicians, I suspect, with their fixation about no more taxes.
Chuck Gray (and the Gov) approved a state land gravel mine that’s next to housing developments. He didn’t even know what he approved.
The mechanics of hand counting ballots are preposterously complicated. We in Wyoming typically have ten or more races to be decided on a single ballot, which means that each ballot has to be hand counted ten or more times to hand count the results. Obviously, a single count by one person would not be allowable, so multiply by the number of ballot counters. Crazy complicated. Crazy time consuming. Crazy expensive. Crazy unnecessary. Crazy. Save hand counts for contested or extraordinarily close elections, which in Wyoming are rare.
How quaint. Hand counting. We could go back to horse and buggies, fetch flour from sacks to make bread. and kids could leave school at age 10 to work the fields. We could restart the past and start living in the last century as though jumpstarting the past will make a better future. All it will do is make us run in circles….no past and no future…..like a gerbil on a wheel. Wyoming is stuck in a place as it is. Lets not make it worse. Hand counting!
1 , 2 , yawn 3, lol