Secretary of State faces backlash from Teton County lawmakers

Lawmakers accuse secretary of state of overreach, making it harder to vote.
 
JACKSON — Teton County lawmakers are warning that Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s new registration rules could have a chilling effect on voting and usurp the Legislature’s authority.
 
One lawmaker is calling the move “anti-democratic.” Gray, meanwhile, says his reforms are aimed at ensuring election integrity.
 
The Secretary of State’s Office notified the public of the proposed changes on Dec. 7. The public may comment on the draft rules through Jan. 26. A hearing will take place on the final day of that comment period at 1 p.m. in Cheyenne before next steps are taken. Members of the public may also register to attend online.
 
Civil liberty groups such as the Equality State Policy Center, which is a coalition-based organization of more than 25 members, requested the public hearing in a letter to Chief Policy Director and General Counsel Joe Rubino. The Policy Center expressed concern about the rule’s potential ramifications and the rule-making process.
 
The proposed change would require further proof of residency if the address on a voter’s form of identification such as a driver’s license or passport is not that individual’s current residence. This would impact many Teton County residents registering to vote for the first time or reregistering after not taking part in the last general election. That’s because most county residents have post office boxes on their IDs instead of their home addresses.
 
Although the proposed changes are still early in the process, Rep. Mike Yin, a Teton County Democrat, said Gray is circumventing the Legislature.
 
In August a legislative committee had started working on a draft bill requiring voters to have resided in the state for at least 30 days prior to being eligible to vote in an election. Yin sees Gray’s rule-making effort as getting out ahead of that legislation.
 
“It really feels like the secretary of state would prefer to just be a lawmaker,” Yin said. “And he is welcome to do that by running for the Legislature.
“But it is the responsibility of the Legislature to create authorities for the secretary of state, not the secretary of state to create authority for himself by passing rules that have no statutory authority behind it.”
 
Yin said his primary concern is not whether the residency requirement rules would have a chilling effect on registration prior to the 2024 election, but the “usurpation of authority from the Legislature.” If stricter residency requirements are desired, then they can go through the proper government channels to become law, he said.
 
“We have separate branches for a reason,” he said.
 
Likewise, Rep. Liz Storer is pushing back on Gray’s draft rule change.
 
Like many in Teton County, Storer’s driver’s license lists her P.O. box rather than her street address.
 
The Teton County Democrat said asking honest, hardworking families to bring in additional proof of residency if they have a P.O. box listed on their driver’s licenses would cause many eligible voters not to cast ballots. Storer said many residents already find it hard enough to take time off from work to do so now. Gray’s draft rules could require additional forms of ID like paychecks, utility bills or leases.
 
Adding more forms of proof could result in longer lines at the polls as it takes election judges longer to check in voters, Teton County Clerk Maureen Murphy has warned.
 
Murphy also expressed some concern for residents who may not have the means to prove their residence. She said a new voter in Teton County who just turned 18 and lives with parents might not have a bill in his name or mail sent to his physical address.
 
The Equality State Policy Center also cited other groups who could be disenfranchised.
 
“I strongly urge the Secretary of State Office to carefully consider the potential ramifications of this proposed rule for some of Wyoming’s most vulnerable: women in shelters, Wind River reservation residents and the unhoused,” Equality State Policy Center Director Marissa Carpio wrote to the Secretary of State’s Office. “We must strike a balance between safeguarding the integrity of our elections and guaranteeing that all eligible citizens have unimpeded access to the ballot box.”
 
Storer called the proposed change “a cynical, anti-democratic effort that should be stopped in its tracks.”
 
“Far-right extremists such as Chuck Gray know they win when fewer people vote, so they want to make voting harder,” Storer said. “Voters already sign an affidavit; requiring redundant proof of residency is not in statute, and thus it shouldn’t be required through the rulemaking process, either.”
 

 
 
Gray had equally harsh words.
 
“These newfound attacks on long-standing duties of constitutional officers are simply another false attack from the radical left to try and prevent us from ever achieving anything meaningful, conservative reforms, like common-sense election integrity measures,” he said. “When the registration rules were created originally, no one in the media had any issues with it.
 
“Nor have there been any objections to the continuous and ongoing rulemakings by state agencies.”
 
Gray said the Legislature’s draft residency requirement bill came from concepts he brought up while the Legislature was in between sessions. He also said his rules are different from the 30-day minimum residency requirement being mulled by lawmakers. He said the efforts could move forward in tandem.
 
“Our rulemaking has to do with the documents provided to register to vote, which has always been delegated via the Secretary of State’s rulemaking authority,” he said.
 
He cites his authority in the election code addressing “acceptable identification” means, and general provisions on the chief election officer preparing forms, rules and advice, such as promulgating rules “necessary to maintain uniform voting and voting counting procedures and orderly voting.”
 
Gray said that the rules process also was initiated in part by county clerks and that they “acknowledged and invited rulemaking from our office during the Joint Corporations Committee meeting in Douglas on August 24, 2023.”
 
Wyoming County Clerks Association representative Malcolm Ervin provided a memo expressing concern about a lack of clarity in the term “bona fide” resident and said the association sought clarification. But it did not take a policy position.
 
At the latest meeting in October, Ervin said county clerks had no official position on the bill before it was sponsored and the clerks could administer the changes. Ervin didn’t respond to a request for comment on the proposed rules.
 
Additionally, Gray said lawmakers had previously acknowledged the secretary of state’s authority to create rules “to provide proof of residency upon registration.” He pointed directly to a moment during the last session.
 
“Our good elected official downstairs who deals with elections gets to set rules and what is required to be shown on that particular day, the day of voter registration,” Rep. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, said in February on the floor of the House when discussing an elections bill. “What we’re talking about in this particular bill is what you have to show the day you go to vote.”
 
But Sen. Mike Gierau is questioning Gray’s approach. Gierau zeroed in on both Gray’s authority and taxpayer dollars being spent to go through the lengthy process required to implement new executive rules.
 
The Jackson Democrat sits on the Joint Appropriations Committee and has considered budget requests for the 2025-26 biennium in hearings over the past few weeks, and the Secretary of State’s Office requested a $3.27 million increase. The standard budget was $9.3M, and the latest proposal is $12.6M.
 
“For a guy who never voted for a budget the whole time he was a legislator, now all the sudden he has all these expenses and costs,” Gierau said. “Now he’s filing briefs on court cases that have nothing to do with the state of Wyoming and writing more draconian rules about how to try to keep people from the polls.”
 
Gierau criticized Gray for what he sees as the secretary treating his office as a platform for campaigning.
 
“With all due respect, I think he really ought to hunker down and just try to stay in his lane,” he said. “And kind of get a handle on his job.”
 
This story was published on December 27, 2023.