Wyoming’s chief elections officer is backing the Trump administration’s plans to restrict how voters are able to cast their ballots ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
In a lengthy Truth Social post on Monday morning, President Donald Trump announced he would “lead a movement” to stop states from using mail-in ballots and voting machines.
“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump wrote. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
Such an executive order is likely to face legal challenges — the U.S. Constitution vests the power to determine the “times, places, and manner” of elections with the states. That was the case with Trump’s earlier executive order that would have required documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. A federal court temporarily halted the order in April.
Shortly after Trump’s announcement Monday, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray said he was in “complete and total support” of the president’s plans.
“The election integrity measures President Trump outlined are very important and are supported by the people,” Gray wrote in a press release, pointing to similar legislation Wyoming lawmakers voted to sponsor last week.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus also expressed its support on Monday.
“Here in Wyoming, we’ve already led the way in advancing President Trump’s agenda by requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, enhancing voter list maintenance statutes, and banning ranked choice voting,” the caucus wrote in a post on Facebook.
The caucus said it “will prioritize” pen-and-paper ballots as the default in Wyoming but stopped short of spelling out its stance on mail-in ballots.
Meanwhile, Gov. Mark Gordon “continues to believe that Wyoming has the most secure elections in the nation,” Michael Pearlman, spokesperson for Gordon, told WyoFile.
“I appreciate the President’s concerns and recognize that our Constitution chooses a Republican form of government over a centralized one,” Gordon wrote in a statement.
Both the primary and general elections in Wyoming were unanimously certified by the state canvassing board — a committee on which both Gray and Gordon sit. Ahead of last November’s election, almost 90% of Wyoming adults said they expected their county’s tally of ballots for president in the 2024 election to be very or somewhat reliable, according to a University of Wyoming survey.
Local election officials also say voter fraud is exceedingly rare.
Lawmakers, however, have spent considerable time and resources in recent years aiming to revamp the state’s election system. Forty-five election-related bills were filed in the 2025 legislative session and one committee may choose to sponsor as many as 10 new bills modeled on failed 2025 bills in next year’s session.
If Trump’s agenda is enacted — whether through an executive order or legislation at the state level — Wyoming’s elections could look dramatically different for some voters.
Absentee voting, which accounts for both mail-in and early voting in Wyoming, is popular amongst Equality State residents. At least 45% of the state’s registered voters cast their ballots absentee in the most recent election.
Most states, including Wyoming, allow voters to request ballots that they can fill out at home and mail in or deliver via official dropboxes. Secretary Gray has been pushing to eliminate drop boxes in Wyoming, going so far as to say that state law does not currently allow for them. While county clerks have not taken a stance on banning ballot drop boxes, they have defended them as a longstanding, legal method for people to cast their ballots. Eight states and Washington, D.C., meanwhile, allow elections to be handled entirely by mail. Oregon, for example, credits its vote-by-mail system as increasing voter turnout and security.
As for voting machines, only Laramie County, the state’s most populous county, relies on them. More specifically, the county uses “express voting,” which has voters use a touchscreen to select their candidates. The machine then prints a ballot of their selections to be tabulated. But if they so wish, Laramie County voters may request a pen-and-paper ballot.
Wyoming’s other 22 counties already use pen-and-paper ballots as the default.
At the most recent Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee, lawmakers debated the extent to which the federal government should play a role in Wyoming’s elections.
Amid discussion on a bill to ban ballot drop boxes, Gray told the committee that such a policy “is a huge priority of the Trump administration.”
Gray also said returning ballots via the postal service is “more secure and regulated” than ballot drop boxes.
Soon thereafter, Jackson Democrat Rep. Mike Yin recalled Gray’s opposition to previous executive orders related to elections, including one during the Biden administration.
“I think it was just two years ago we were talking about, ‘Why would we ever federalize our elections?’” Yin said. “So I do want to take issue with the, ‘Oh, this is the federal administration’s position, so this is my position, too.’”
“And I’m curious whether you think that our elections should be decided by Wyoming or should they be decided by D.C.?,” Yin said.
Gray responded that he’d long opposed “the Biden-Obama-Harris attempt” to decrease rural post office services, which can deliver absentee ballots. When Yin interrupted to ask that “federal personalities” be kept out of the conversation, committee co-chairman Sen. Cale Cale, R-Lander, called a point of order.
“We don’t need to drag in all the world’s politics into this discussion,” Case said.
After last week’s meeting, Yin told WyoFile he’s “happy to get advice from the federal government if they want to find ways for us to have more people vote.”
“I think that can be a shared goal between the state and federal government,” Yin said. “But if the federal government is going to start dictating ways for us to prevent people from voting, I don’t think the federal government should be telling the state what to do.”
Several hours after Trump’s announcement, Wyoming U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman held a town hall in Casper.
A constituent asked Hageman, a staunch ally of the president, about Trump’s forthcoming executive order.
“So elections are run by the states,” Hageman said. “So I don’t know that President Trump is going to succeed at that.”
Here it is again…moron Gray and the Freedum Cacas making up crap…it was not broke here in Wyoming. Again, do something constructive!! Why are you allowing out of country LLC’s to have made up companies here in Wyoming? What are all of you overpaid blowhorns doing ?
If everyone is so concerned about election integrity in a state like Wyoming where election fraud doesn’t exist, why on earth would a conspiracy driven, craven, little sycophant like Chuck Gray ever be elected to oversee our elections in the first place? If you want integrity he sure isn’t the guy.
So let me get this straight. The previous elections — the ones that brought us Trump and all these boot-licking Republicans — were fraudulent / illegitimate? That explains alot.
All of this posturing, rhetoric, and plain silliness boils down to one thing. President Trump is trying to change regulations that will give the Republican party an advantage in the up coming mid-term elections. Whether it’s changing voting regulations, states redistricting, or heavens knows what else they will come up with, I sincerely hope that there are enough informed people that can plainly see what is being attempted, and will vote for the best candidate, not just because they have a R or D behind their name. As for Gray, he is not capable of having an independent thought and needs to go somewhere else to spew his nonsense.
Gray wants to do away with mail-in-ballots and voting machines so he can ……..
Gray is like his master thinking we are to stupid to see through his comments.
As in Oregon and other states with 100% mail-in ballots, it works so smooth here in Washington state and has done so for years. Advocates for Trump’s assault are chasing phony villains ultimately to control who votes.
Yes, we MUST control who votes. Documented citizens only. Why? Because elections directly and/or indirectly impact every aspect of our lives, from the moment of conception to death and beyond. That’s our social contract. Citizens grant immense power to elected officials provided the citizens can hold the elected officials to account via honest elections.
Elections are about power and who we grant to hold such power. Convenience, is but a side show used as a foil to hide the dishonest law breakers quest for power.
Undocumented immigrant voting is a boogie man used by politicians wanting to make voting by anyone more difficult. Over the 6 decades of elections since I first voted, the actual number of fraudulent votes counted have been miniscule. Until our so called president started squealing about rigged elections undocumented voters were not considered a problem. After several years of the same shit being presented by right wing political hacks and countless investigations the proof of unlawful voting is scarce as capable appointees in the current administration. But boy howdy! It is a sure fire diversion from genuine issues, like school funding, health care, and…oh yeah! Epstein!
If they ban mail-in ballots they will be denying all overseas military the right to vote. Or are they expecting our servicemen and women to abandon their posts to fly home so they can vote. These measures to prevent fraud are ludicrous. The Freedumb Caucus was supposedly elected under the mail-in/electronic voting system, yet I don’t see them contesting the results. Unless they know there was fraud on their part, and they really didn’t win.
The fundamental issue IMHO with the machines is the lack of transparency. I research who/what I’ll vote for, mark my ballot, stick it in the machine and watch it suck up my ballot into the ether. No person will ever see my ballot or count my votes. It’s a pure faith based system. At the end of election day, the machine spits out a little piece of paper with some numbers. That’s it. Those who don’t have total faith in those numbers or would like to understand where they came from are deemed idiots and heretics.
Something might look weird in the numbers, or a race is close. The check is to take the same ballots and stuff ’em through the same machine again to see if the same numbers come out. What’s the definition of insanity again?
Neiman’s race last year in Weston county certainly showed this strategy doesn’t work. 1103 votes out of 1455 total were miss-counted. A 76% error rate. From a machine. Run by a seasoned clerk and staff. The back up check would have missed this too. If a hand count of ballots yielded a 76% error rate, we’d never think of hand counting ballots ever again.
Hand counting ballots is no cake walk either. I ran a small hand count pilot in my precinct this past May. It’s expensive, labor intensive and time consuming. But I do think there’s a fit to use hand counting as the means of backing up the machines for recounts and post election audits. It provides a separate secondary means of verifying election results. Very modest resources are required for this and would have made the Weston debacle so much more streamlined to catch the mistakes rather than forcing the Sec of State to stand on the clerk’s desk and demand a hand count.
The Freedom Caucus is a cult of trumpists following the will of one man, one man, not the people of Wyoming. This little stunt of trumps is to make voting harder for the homebound and rural voters that have to travel to vote. Who shut down all those post offices and sorting stations that made the mails slower?
Of course they do. Their objective is to make voting as difficult and confusing as possible. When only fanatics vote, fanatics get elected.
I am sure Utah will do the same thing even though it has been done for years, and done well. Pretty sad, bow and down and obey the mightly leader.
The U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 4 states: ‘The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.’
That means elections are fundamentally a state responsibility. Wyoming has managed elections with integrity under the current system, including in 2024 when our results were certified and trusted. So why now do we need to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines?
Trump and even Chuck himself were elected just fine with the very system that is now under attack. Our mail-in ballots worked. Our voting machines worked. Our counties certified results without controversy. Where is the evidence that the system failed us?
This looks less like reform and more like theater, solving a problem that does not exist. If the true motive is federal overreach, ceding Wyoming’s sovereignty to a national directive, then we should be honest about that too. States’ rights mean something. Let’s not surrender them in the name of fear. We ought to strengthen confidence in what already works, not tear it down.”
Little buy little we are loosing our freedoms , I can’t see the difference between a street gang or the freedom caucus.
The Constitution gives to the states the authority to run the elections. It is bad enough that Trump is taking his lead from his pal Putin to ban mail-in ballots. Not surprising that Gray and his Freedom Caucus would support this dictator-driven proposal. The good people of Wyoming need to push back strongly against banning mail-in ballots which a large number of voters rely on.
It’s worth noting that mail-in voting was written into Russian law by none other than Putin himself in 2020. https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-signs-law-allowing-voting-mail-internet/30630536.html
It’s a state’s right issue, so per usual, trump is just blathering away, idiotic nonsense.
If someone was in the country illegally the last thing it seems would be to draw attention to themselves by voting. Wyoming has much bigger problems to deal with than handcounting paper ballots, mailing requested ballots and drop boxes. Who would pay for all these changes? Hopefully not the rainy day fund
Even hageman can’t get behind chrump’s stupidity. When are the sycophants going to start calling her a RINO?
Trump gets his voting advice from Putin, the authoritarian murderer. Chuck gets his advice from Trump.
Good point!!