Why is the Wyoming Legislature making it harder for people to vote?

The 2026 Wyoming Legislature Covenes

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Why does it feel like everything I learned in my civics class is being turned on its head?

Granted, that was way back in the 1970s, when teachers talked about the importance of voting and why it was our duty to vote in federal, state and local elections. We learned that our election system is what makes our nation a democracy and separates us from countries where dictators are in control or monarchies rule.

When people have confidence in the election system, the more they exercise their right to vote and the closer we become to a truly representative democratic republic.

But what I learned has little resemblance to what’s happening in Wyoming today, where lawmakers have introduced 15 bills to change the state’s voting laws. The vast majority would either make it more difficult to vote in the Equality State or address “problems” that don’t exist.

Republican-sponsored bills to prohibit ballot drop boxes, remove electronic voting equipment, and count ballots by hand have garnered the most attention. These harmful proposals were endorsed by Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a former Republican legislator who made “election integrity” the hallmark of his 2022 campaign.

How does Gray — one of only three election deniers to win election to their state’s top elections office — keep getting away with claiming Wyoming has “tremendous problems” with elections, despite never providing a scintilla of evidence to support it?

Here’s my take: Across the nation, Republicans in recent elections have expressed fears that the more people vote, the less chance their party has to win.

President Donald Trump admitted it in 2020 when he criticized a Democratic package of bills to make it easier to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic by expanding voting by mail and extending early voting.

“The things they had in there were crazy,” Trump said. “They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

It was a rare moment of honesty about elections at the end of Trump’s first term. 

Clearly, the GOP’s goal is to erode voters’ confidence that their ballots will be counted. That strategy includes Wyoming, though it’s mind-boggling that voters who gave Trump his largest margin of victory in the past three presidential elections — a whopping 46.2% in 2024! — believe anything Gray says about the so-called lack of election integrity.

The producers of “2000 Mules,” a book and film that falsely claimed Democrats used ballot harvesters to dump illegal votes in drop boxes, halted distribution last year and apologized. But Gray, who offered free showings of the “documentary” during his campaign, still demands that the state ban ballot drop boxes.

Wyoming county clerks began using drop boxes about 30 years ago because they made it easier for absentee voters to return ballots.

Seven county clerks continued the practice last year despite Gray urging them to stop. Gray has no statutory authority over the issue, so Rep. Christopher Knapp, R-Gillette, sponsored House Bill 131, “Ballot drop boxes-prohibition” to make it a state law. The measure passed the Freedom Caucus-led House Friday by a 51-10 vote and is now in the Senate.

“We hold that the use of ballot drop boxes as a method of ballot delivery is safe, secure and statutorily authorized,” the County Clerks’ Association of Wyoming wrote to Gray.

Marissa Carpio of the Equality State Policy Center told the House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee that her organization filed open records requests for all election complaints received in the last three years. 

Not a single one alleged any problems with ballot drop boxes. Tamper-proof boxes are installed outside county election offices, with rules about chain of custody and how ballots are collected. In some locations, they are kept under 24-hour video surveillance and generally provide for safer and faster returns than the U.S. Postal Service.

House Bill 215, “Prohibition on electronic voting equipment,” does exactly what the title says, which would make Wyoming the first state to take such action. It’s sponsored by Rep. Scott Smith, R-Lingle, a Freedom Caucus member who, in a shocking moment of transparency last Friday, stepped aside from explaining the bill to the House Corporations panel and instead invited Wyoming Voter Initiatives — the measure’s actual creators — to do so.

The unelected lobbying group has successfully placed a property tax initiative on the 2026 ballot that could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues at the expense of schools and local governments. House Bill 157 combines tossing out the state’s electronic voting machines with its goal for 2028: an initiative to count all ballots by hand.  

Is the Legislature so rife with incompetents that it will approve this monstrous 43-page bill? Cheryl Aguiar with Wyoming Voter Initiatives said it will ensure “Wyoming leads the way in not being a slave anymore to these machines.”

Yes, those awful machines that have helped Wyoming become a model of fair and accurate elections will all potentially be junked because Trump was a sore loser, and Wyomingites were gullible enough to fall for his lies.

Until Gray, every Wyoming secretary of state, Republicans and Democrats alike, expressed confidence in the election system since the Legislature approved automated voting machines in 1957. Electronic equipment was introduced in 2004.

Former GOP Secretary of State Ed Buchanan, in an April 2022 interview with Wyoming Public Radio, said all 23 counties reported 100% accuracy in pre-election tests and post-election audits.

Buchanan said there’s no reason to turn back the clock to the 1930s and count ballots by hand.

“If you don’t think that there was a greater potential for mischief and fraud than there is now, then I think we’re being a little naive,” Buchanan said. “I have great confidence in the way our machines work. And I especially appreciate the fact that we have the paper ballots to back up those machine results.” 

Hand counts would cost the state millions of dollars and delay election results in the most populous counties. Last October Campbell County Clerk Cindy Lovelace estimated after a test run that counting ballots by hand and finishing within a day could cost as much as $1.3 million.

The real danger, though, isn’t the time or the money, it’s that hand counting ballots, at best inserts human fallibility into the system and at worst throws the door wide open to deliberate foul play. As Joseph Stalin is often credited with saying, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

Beware the elected official who, despite a lack of evidence, asserts only they know the right way to count the votes. 

Sponsor Smith told the committee that the bill “is a good way to get back to bringing confidence to the electorate,” — referring, presumably, to the confidence Gray and his cronies have spent the last five years loudly attacking.

No, but it’s a great way to blow up an efficient system and undermine public trust so people think it’s nearly impossible to vote out incumbents. Low voter turnout likely enables those already in office to stay in power, which is the whole point of such legislation.

Another clunker, House Bill 157, “Proof of voter citizenship,” overwhelmingly passed the House. Noncitizens voting in droves is a phony issue sparked by incessant, unproven claims by Trump and Elon Musk, his top donor who also wields tremendous social media power as the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter.

Republicans ran wild with the duo’s easily debunked charge that Democrats opened the Southern border to allow noncitizens to vote.

One thing I remember from civics class is that the nation’s founders had an unwavering faith in elections. Perhaps too much, as we are unfortunately learning in 2025.

“The process of elections affords a moral certainty that the office of president will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications,” said Alexander Hamilton.

“Seldom” is the key word. Once is enough to threaten American democracy, if the person and his followers think they just need to convince enough people on the other side that their vote is meaningless.