Secretary of State calls for retests of voting machines 8 days before Wyoming primary elections

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.”

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.

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