With just over one week before the 2024 primary elections, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray has formally requested that several county clerks around the Equality State redo tests of voting machines.
Gray sent a letter Monday addressed to “County Clerks,” following a dust-up between Laramie County election administrators and the Wyoming Republican Party.
The dispute, which has spawned a GOP lawsuit, centers on test ballots that included the same number of votes for different candidates. That runs counter to state statute requiring “a different number of valid votes shall be assigned to each candidate.”
Speaking to the inconsistency, Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee said late last week the tests detected ‘no errors’ and that the legal complaint “seeks to disrupt our current primary election and force my office to provide alternative means for counting ballots.”
The timing of Gray’s request has caused some lawmakers to worry that he, in concert with the state party, is attempting to sow distrust in Wyoming’s elections. The secretary of state has promoted misinformation about elections in the past, including sponsoring showings of the now debunked film, “2000 Mules.”
“To do this a week ahead [of the election] is absolutely deplorable,” Wyoming Senate President Ogden Driskill (R-Devils Tower) told WyoFile. “It’s a blatant move to try to force hand-counts of our ballots.”
”To do this a week ahead [of the election] is absolutely deplorable. It’s a blatant move to try to force hand-counts of our ballots.”
Ogden Driskill
In the Laramie County matter, the GOP’s lawsuit seeks an injunction ahead of the election. State Republican Party Chairman Frank Eathorne told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle that hand counting ballots was the “only outstanding option” given the timing.
Gray did not respond to WyoFile’s interview request. His letter did not mention hand counts, but rather focused on the fact that “some counties’ tests did not assign a different number of valid votes to each candidate for an office during their respective public testing of voting equipment.”
The letter was disseminated via a press release 51 minutes after the Wyoming Republican Party sent the first of two “election integrity alerts” punctuated by red, all-caps type that included fundraising appeals.
“Are the County Clerks trying to hide failed tests of their electronic voting systems?” one of the fundraising appeals stated. “If so, what are they hiding?”
The Wyoming GOP’s appeal contended without offering evidence that only one of the state’s 23 counties — Platte — conducted tests of its tabulators “without error.” The alert criticized clerks in Johnson, Washakie, Crook, Albany, Carbon and Weston counties for allegedly making it hard to access “the numbers they used to test their vote counting tabulators.”
Clerks in two of those counties told WyoFile that they are, in fact, retesting some voting machines, though the decision was not necessarily prompted by the secretary of state’s request nor Wyoming GOP’s messaging. Another county is retesting as a result of the letter.
Albany County election administrators redid tests on some of its machines on Sunday because the test deck of ballots it received from the vendor also did not include the legally required “different number of valid votes … assigned to each candidate”, according to County Clerk Kayla White. Specifically, she said, they retested their absentee ballot machine and their “450,” — the big central processing machine they use for all absentee ballots.
Gray’s letter asked for retesting of “each” voting system that will be used in next week’s primary in the counties with tests that did not comply with state statute, with the “each” underlined, bolded and italicized.
Albany County is declining to take that step, White said.
“In talking with our county attorney, [the more focused retests] is what we came up with,” she said.
Laramie County, Gray wrote, already committed to retesting.
In Weston County, Clerk Becky Hadlock was already planning on a retest of all the county’s voting machines because of a separate test-ballot issue. The issue, she said, was that one of the local candidates had no votes marked on the test ballot.
“Therefore it wasn’t a test for that candidate,” Hadlock said.
Weston’s retest is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday. It was not related to the secretary of state’s request, according to Hadlock.
Washakie County was the only county reached by WyoFile that is retesting its voting machines in response to Gray’s request. County Clerk Lily Rakness Parra sent word to her residents in a letter disseminated Monday. The notice specifically cites Gray’s letter and explains the retest will take place at 9 a.m. Friday.
“I want to emphasize that I fully stand by our original testing, and I am 100 percent confident in the integrity of Washakie County’s election process,” Rakness Parra wrote to residents. “The dedication of the county clerk’s office, as well as the diligent efforts of county clerks across Wyoming, have consistently ensured the highest standards of election integrity over the years.”
Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that Secretary of State Chuck Gray sought retesting in the counties whose tests did not comply with state statute and to include the fact that Laramie County, according to Gray, will retest its system. —Ed.
All of this election integrity circus is only because Donald Trump is a really really really poor loser. If he could just say “I lost”, none of this conspiracy theory stuff would be happening. The Trump-Biden election was the most secure election in the history of the u.s. All of this just shows how far a lie can travel.
It is disappointing and actually astonishing that the people of this state elected Chuck Gray as Secretary of State. He needs to be unelected as soon as possible for Wyoming to get back to common sense and “the live and let live” attitude we once enjoyed before the “freedom” caucus took over.
AWESOME!
Are some folks trying to rewrite the Secretary of State’s job? Chuck is doing what he promised to accomplish if “VOTED” into office as “We the people” desire and expected by our vote.
What seems to be the issue? How much labor intensive can this be? It’s a machine! It’s an electronic machine/apparatus? It’s not wirelessly connected to a central controller hub/device? It’s most definitely not an item that weighs in over or close to fifty (50) pounds?
Excellent job Chuck Gray! Chuck STILL has to rely on the Honor, Honesty, Integrity and VALIDITY of the person stating that the retest was even taken because the State of Wyoming has some windshield time to travel to each place to personally verify that the tests are actually performed but of course no one else has thought o this either? WYOFILE thank you for exercising your FIRST AMENDMENT.
A big thank you in advance to all 23 county clerks, election officials, and poll workers for all that you do. You are trusted and appreciated. I swear sometimes that Secretary Gray is so full of it that the State of Wyoming chose to honor him with a number 2 on his license plates.
Could someone please explain to Chuck that this is Wyoming. I’m a life-long, registered Democrat and I know this is Wyoming. Everybody and their dogs are Republican ( not MAGA ). That’s the MAGA way though, say anything doesn’t matter about facts.
I’m not disappointed in Chuck. I never expected anything productive from him.
The agenda is clear. Throwing doubt on election outcomes claiming fraud or mis-counting in advance of potential GOP losses is a national Republican program that is an outcome of the last Presidential loss.
If you don”t win claim foul play.
But in WY where we vote robotically for Republicans anyway. I think “Chuck” is looking for attention outside WY.
Voting integrity: machines, drop boxes, eatly voting, mail ballots all have been demonstrated to be safe and secure in the many decades of voting in Wyoming in my experience. No need for anymore testing.
All this time. It goes down to the wire on test the machines for accuracy? Sounds like Piss Poor Planning to me.
Solution in search of a problem.
Y’all elect some real clowns.
As an FYI: Hot Springs County is retesting today, Tuesday, Aug. 13 at 2:30 pm.
Let’s vote Chuck out of office.
Chuck will come on the radio and blab away but will not answer questions. TBH the Clerks in Wyoming already have a tough enough job, but since this liar was elected to the SOS, it has arguably gotten worse.
So our state statute says the test ballots should have differing numbers of votes for each candidate and the way I heard Chuck was that some did and some did not. I realize the Legislature has a lot on its plate as it’s trying to manage wombs, pass a budget, build a shooting range, ensure guns are stitched into your hand as well as tell voting machine companies how to do their tests. While the Legislature has never been wrong when they pass laws as none are tied up in the Courts, one would think that the test gurus in the Legislature and the SOS would want to have some test of a machine in case there was an actual tie? Sounds like the companies send test packets out to all customers where the company is ensuring that it knows what the results of the tests should reveal when sent and that these results can be validated across the country? Sounds like Wyoming may be the only State that passed a stupid law with this stupid requirement, but Chuck says they must follow the law, no matter how stupid it may be.
Chuck also said on the radio that he does not trust Clerks to safely handle ballots collected from secure drop boxes. He is okay with every mailbox and mail person on the planet handling mail-in ballots to Clerks, but the Clerks themselves do not know a valid ballot dropped in their own secure boxes? His logic is ludicrous and every Clerk knows it, even if the voters are duped by his performative antics.
The Wyoming Republican leadership, led by the ever-stirring-the-pot Chuckie Gray, are disrupters aimed causing confusion, discord, doubt, and mistrust in the orderly elections in Wyoming. Their voices must be silenced, and the sooner the better, for the good of all Wyoming.
And so out begins….
The manufactured hysteria from the chrump supporting gullibles is palpable. Chuckles is positioning himself to be a savior of a hypothetical problem. The idiotic and gullible wyoming electorate is ready to eat it up.