Election confidence still strong

CASPER — Most Wyomingites remain confident in the integrity of the state’s elections, even with continued attention over the 2020 presidential election vote count, a University of Wyoming survey released Friday found. 
UW’s School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies partnered with the school’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center to conduct a survey of 436 Wyoming residents between Oct. 22 and Thursday, according to the university. 
The surveyors selected residents at random. 
Overall, 94% of respondents said they are “very confident” or “somewhat confident” that their votes will be counted accurately in Wyoming this year.
Dr. Jim King, a UW political science professor and the survey’s director, said the results fit patterns elsewhere in the U.S. 
The Pew Research Center conducted a national survey in mid-October that found 90% of respondents were confident elections in their communities would be administered well. 
There are differences in peoples’ confidence in Wyoming’s elections across their political affiliations, the results show. 
Roughly 83% of Democrat respondents said they are “very confident” in Wyoming’s election administration. In contrast, 64% of independents and 56% of Republicans said the same. 
But when the “very confident” and “somewhat confident” responses are combined, those differences are practically erased; 98% of Democrats, 95% of Republicans and 92% of independents reported being at least somewhat confident in the administration of elections in Wyoming this year. 
Residents’ confidence in the administration of Wyoming elections is significantly higher than their reported confidence in the last presidential election. 
Right after the 2020 election, 48% of Wyomingites who responded to another UW survey expressed confidence in the accuracy of the nationwide presidential vote count, King said. This year, 50% of respondents said they were confident in the vote count from that election, a difference which King said is statistically insignificant. 
Partisan differences also emerged in the confidence level for the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election vote count; 98% of Democrats, 33% of Republicans and 58% of independents expressed confidence in that vote count. 
Election integrity and voters’ confidence in the electoral process have been a constant topic this year in Wyoming and national politics. It’s the first election cycle since former president Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. 
Since then, Trump has continued to make unsubstantiated claims that rampant voter fraud stole his win, despite dozens of courts concluding otherwise. 
Candidates in Wyoming races this year have echoed and campaigned on that concern. 
Back in August, Trump-backed Republican nominee for U.S. House Harriet Hageman said at a public forum that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.” 
Another Trump-backed candidate, Republican nominee for secretary of state Chuck Gray, focused much of his primary campaign on rooting out voter fraud and banning ballot drop boxes. 
Gray, who called Biden’s victory “fraudulent,” held screenings across the state of “2,000 Mules,” a film that alleges there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The Wyoming Republican Party is also hosting screenings of “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump,” which concerns the millions that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated in 2020 to nonprofits that gave grants to local elections offices. 
(The donations were not contributions to President Joe Biden’s campaign, and they didn’t violate campaign finance law, according to the Associated Press.)
 
This story was published on Nov. 7, 2022.