Park County denies ballot hand-count proposal

FROM WYOFILE: 
The Park County Commissioners will not approve a proposal by Park County Republican Men’s Club to hand-count ballots in the 2022 elections, but the proposal remains in play. 
The commission followed the counsel of Park County and Prosecuting Attorney Bryan Skoric, who advised against the proposal, citing several apparent conflicts with Wyoming election statutes as well as federal law. The commission will now consider whether to approve a request to hand-count ballots from the previous election instead, pending an opinion from the Wyoming Attorney General.
Wyoming uses paper ballots and tallies them with electronic counting machines. The Park County Republican Men’s Club proposed counting those ballots by hand, characterizing it as a way to reassure voters of the accuracy of the machines. 
Since then, Park County has become a focal point in a statewide conversation about election integrity. While maintaining that Wyoming’s elections are fair, efficient and free from tampering, election officials agree that voter confidence in the process needs a boost. Hand-counting ballots, however, is not a legal solution, according to the county attorney. 
“Voting procedures in the State of Wyoming are set by the Wyoming Legislature, not local officials,” Skoric wrote in his opinion letter. 
In April, the commissioners requested Skoric provide a legal opinion before deciding on the proposal. 
Skoric cites three state statutes in his letter, including one that requires counties to use ballots that are designed for electronic counting.
If all 23 counties had their own voting and tabulation procedures — such as one hand-counting, another not — “uniformity would be lost and voter skepticism would surely ensue,” Skoric wrote. 
Hand counts are subject to human error, which is “the very thing the Legislature intended to eliminate” by enacting such a statute, according to Skoric. He also pointed to voter privacy, which is guaranteed by the Wyoming Constitution. 
“Handing ballots over to any individual or group outside of existing election laws would violate this constitutional provision,” he wrote. 
Sharing ballots would also violate federal law that requires ballots to be kept and preserved by the Park County Clerk for 22 months following an election. 
Counting ballots by hand would also present a timing issue, according to Skoric. Per Wyoming statute, election results must be submitted to the secretary of state no later than 10:30 p.m. on election night. Voting machines allow county clerks to meet this deadline, Skoric wrote, “whereas hand counting could take days.”
Violating any of the stated laws would put officials at risk of felony conviction and removal from office, Skoric wrote. He also encouraged those with concerns to volunteer as election judges. 
“County attorneys are charged with giving legal opinions, which are not always popular opinions,” Skoric wrote in the final remarks of his letter. 
Wyoming state law requires public testing of voting machines before use on Election Day. County-level post-election audits are also required. Additionally, the voting machines used in 2020 were more secure and sophisticated than any other voting machines used in the history of Wyoming’s elections, according to Secretary of State Ed Buchanan.
The Park County Republican Men’s Club, however, remains dubious. 
That’s why it first approached the commissioners in April with the proposal to hand-count ballots. Members said the idea was to test the accuracy of the machines. 
As Skoric made his recommendation against the proposal at Tuesday’s meeting, the group changed its game plan. 
“Our alternative is to go back and do an entire hand count on the 2020 [Primary Election|,” Cody resident Boone Tidwell said, adding that it would give them “the satisfaction” they are seeking. 
The commission did not reject the new proposal. Instead, the body decided to seek an opinion from the Wyoming Attorney General Bridget Hill on the matter before making the call. 
The commission hopes to get several pieces of information from Hill, not simply whether such a proposal is legal. It’s not clear, for example, to the commission if one would need to be a certified judge to participate in the hand-counting. 
If such a thing is required, Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said it could cost the county more than $4,000. 
 
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.