Wyoming’s primary election features a number of high-profile races, including open contests for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House. But even with that attention, fewer Wyomingites are casting early ballots compared to the last time they decided on a similar slate of prominent races.
Heading into the final weekend before Tuesday’s primary, officials in a handful of Wyoming counties reported lower turnout this year than in 2022. Some election officials chalked that up to that election’s heated race between Republicans Liz Cheney and Harriet Hageman, which drove turnout to historic levels.
A 2023 election law change that shortened early and absentee voting to 28 days beginning in 2024, down from 45 days in 2022, might have also played a role. Wyoming has changed several election laws in recent years, and some of those changes are still catching voters by surprise, local officials say.
In Campbell County, where Republicans made up 96% to 97% of all ballots cast in the last two primaries, more than 3,300 people had voted as of Friday afternoon. More than 2,800 people voted at the elections office, and 488 ballots had been mailed in or dropped off.
Those figures slightly trailed 2022, which was the busiest primary election in Campbell County history, with more than 12,000 ballots cast. That year, 40% of all ballots — 4,990 — were cast before Election Day. That included 3,941 people who voted at the elections office, and 1,049 who dropped off or mailed in their ballots.
Michelle Leiker, Campbell County’s elections coordinator, has seen a steady stream of voters, but her office hasn’t experienced long lines. They’ve made some changes to streamline the process, such as having voters fill out the application for an absentee ballot before they step into the office.
Leiker has fielded questions from voters frustrated about not being able to change their party, the result of a 2023 law intended to curb crossover voting. The law requires voters wanting to change their party to do so before candidates for partisan positions begin filing for office. A 30-day residency requirement has also raised questions, Leiker said.
But for the most part, it’s been business as usual, at least in Campbell County.
Hard to match 2022 primary
On the other side of the state, Teton County Clerk Maureen Murphy anticipated more early voters would arrive Monday, but she wasn’t sure Teton County would beat its 2022 stats, when all of the county and statewide executive offices were last on the ballot.
“I do think that the Liz Cheney and Harriet Hageman representative race that year really brought people out,” Murphy said. “Just because it was such a national news story.”
The contest between Cheney and Hageman was arguably the most closely watched congressional race in the state’s history. Cheney angered many of the state’s Republicans for her vocal criticism of President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and Trump himself visited the state to support Hageman, his pick to unseat one of his biggest political rivals at the time. Pundits viewed the election as a referendum on Trump, and the race drew international attention.
Ultimately, voters cast more than 182,000 ballots across Wyoming, which was the highest raw count in a midterm primary election on record and the highest turnout rate since 1994, according to WyoFile reporting from the time. About 40% of Wyoming’s voting-age population participated.
Voting picks up
At lunchtime Friday, a line of voters wound up the stairs as people waited to cast ballots at the election office in the basement of the Teton County Administration Building.
“It started upticking on Wednesday,” Murphy said.
By Friday, Teton County had beat its early voting turnout for the 2024 primary. Two years ago, 1,045 residents voted in-person early and 403 turned in absentee ballots.
In comparison, 1,748 people had voted early as of Friday afternoon. But absentee ballots were down, with just 179 delivered. During the fiery congressional race four years ago, 3,274 Teton County residents voted early, nearly double this year’s figure so far, while 808 mailed or dropped off absentee ballots, more than four times as many as this year’s tally to date.
The 2022 election cycle brought about a significant change to Wyoming elections. Before 2024, Wyoming voters could change their party affiliation up to Election Day and at the polls. Lawmakers passed House Bill 103 during the 2023 session, which created a deadline to change or declare party affiliations.
The law was spurred by a 2022 mass exodus of Democrats who registered as Republicans in the primary to vote for Cheney. Teton County led the charge, and 75% of the county’s nearly 6,000 registered Republicans voted for the then-congresswoman. Meanwhile, Hageman won 66.3% of the entire state.
Even though an election cycle has already passed with the party affiliation change in place, Murphy and other Teton County election officials have said voters are still taken by surprise.
A new residency rule passed in 2025 has also caught Wyoming newcomers unaware, Murphy said. House Bill 146 dictates that Wyoming residents can’t register to vote unless they’ve lived in the state for at least 30 days. The clerk’s office has had to ask prospective voters who have driver’s licenses or identification from other states to come back with proof of 30-day residency.
“That’s been the biggest confusing one,” Murphy said.
Early voting up, absentee ballots down
After a slow start to early and absentee voting in Park County, Elections Deputy Katie Johnson said things picked up late last week, putting the northwestern Wyoming county on track for what she expects to be a “very typical turnout for us.”
As of 2 p.m. Friday, more than 3,200 Park County voters — or roughly 19% of all the registered voters — had cast their ballots. Of those, more than 93% cast Republican ballots.
The figure includes 2,193 people who voted early at the courthouse in Cody, and that number was steadily rising as Johnson spoke.
Early voting had been tepid through early last week, but starting on Wednesday, “it has just ballooned,” Johnson said. Nearly 250 early voters cast ballots at the courthouse on Thursday, with Friday on pace for even higher participation.
“Hopefully, the enthusiasm continues,” Johnson said.
Park County should easily break its previous primary record of 2,350 early votes, set in 2022, but it’s a different story with absentee voting. As of Friday, roughly 1,040 absentee ballots had been submitted to the clerk’s office, representing a steep drop from the 2,300 absentees cast in the 2022 primary.
It is possible that the county could approach the 1,525 absentee votes cast in the 2024 primary, as there were another 600 of the ballots yet to be returned as of Friday. For whatever reason, “people have just been slow to return those,” Johnson said.
It was a similar story in Natrona County, where absentee ballots lagged behind both 2024 and 2022.
“We have had 1,987 requests and have received 1,401 as of 10:30 this morning,” Clerk Tracy Good said in a Friday email. That’s down from 2,472 mail-in ballots submitted two years ago and 2,613 in 2022.
But those voting early and in person had cast 2,945 ballots through Thursday, surging past 2024 when 2,097 people had cast ballots with two days left to vote. So far, Natrona County’s early voting still trails 2022 when a total of 4,200 people voted early.
When asked about the impact of new election laws, Good reported “no major effects.”
Park County has a slew of contested local races, almost entirely on the Republican side, but Johnson said there isn’t any particular contest pulling in voters. That’s unlike the 2022 primary featuring Cheney and Hageman, when some early voters came in and openly shared their thoughts on the candidates (Park County Republicans went for Hageman by a 3:1 margin).
This time around, “we just get people coming in saying, ‘Well, it’s time to vote,’ or ‘doing my civic duty,’” Johnson said. “There’s not anybody that’s, like, fired up.”
The deputy clerk said the Legislature’s new 30-day residency requirement has not caused any significant issues. Johnson said she’s only had to turn away one couple — as the former Georgians had moved to Park County just four days before they sought to vote — while another man had to go home and retrieve a utility bill to prove how long he’d lived in Cody.
“I really anticipated that we would run into an issue at some point, but we haven’t,” Johnson said, “and everybody has been very understanding of the law change and, if they need extra documentation, bringing that with them.”
She noted that much of the county’s turnout will hinge on how many people show up on Election Day itself.
Sweetwater County has also experienced a jump in early voting and drop in absentee ballots.
As of Friday, 929 residents voted early, while 757 delivered absentee ballots via the mail, dropbox or hand delivery to the election office. In previous elections absentee ballots were more popular, with 1,550 cast in 2022 and 1,134 in 2024. In contrast, fewer people tended to vote early, with 880 early voters in 2022 and 506 in 2024.
County Clerk Cindy Swenson said Sweetwater County has not been largely impacted by new election laws.
“Most registered voters have a Wyoming Driver’s License or Wyoming ID, therefore, not too many people have had to provide proof of residency so far,” Swenson said in an email. “The party change deadline has been the most challenging for our voters and brings in the most complaints.”
Swenson also noted that some voters had expressed concern about not being able to vote if they are married since the name on their driver’s license does not match the last name on their birth certificate. However, she said, “this has not stopped anyone from voting in Sweetwater County.”
As well as leading the Teton County Clerk’s Office, Murphy is president of the County Clerks’ Association of Wyoming. Clerks are keeping their heads down while running their own elections right now, and she wasn’t aware of any statewide turnout trends for early voting, she said. But she noted that many counties don’t have in-person early voting, and even fewer have dropboxes for absentee ballots. Three people need to man a polling center and some smaller counties don’t have the staff, she said. Many Wyomingites mail in their absentee ballots.
But Laramie County also noted an increase in early in-person voting but a decrease in absentee ballots compared to 2024. This year both types of voting are still below 2022, when there was a 45-day voting period and barn-burner of a House race.
When it comes to the 2026 primary, Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee said in a Friday email that there was one thing that was firing up voters in her county.
“Numerous voters have expressed irritation at being bombarded by political mailers, calls, and text messages,” Lee said.
