Crossover voting ban advances

CASPER —An election reform bill that former President Donald Trump is lobbying lawmakers to adopt has cleared its latest legislative hurdle. The Wyoming Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously passed a ban on crossover voting Tuesday night.
Senate File 97, sponsored by Ranchester Republican Sen. Bo Biteman, would end same-day party affiliation change in Wyoming. If enacted, changes in voter affiliation would not be allowed in roughly the three months prior to a primary. 
Normally, voting bills are handled by the Senate Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee. But the crossover bill was moved to the Senate’s agriculture committee, which some speculated made it more likely to succeed. 
Tuesday night’s debate touched on a central question hanging over Wyoming politics: Who should participate in a primary election? 
The League of Women Voters and one lawmaker on the committee pointed out that the bill would require voters to register with a party before knowing who the candidates are in the upcoming race. A voter couldn’t decide at the polls which primary he or she would prefer to participate in. 
Biteman said “that’s the point” when a committee member posed that scenario Tuesday. 
“That’s the exact practice I’m trying to stop,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fair.” 
Critics, however, said the bill would prevent some voters from participating in the political process. 
“People in Wyoming vote for the individuals. They always have. They don’t vote for the parties, and I believe that allows the voters to fully exercise their franchise,” said Marguerite Herman, a lobbyist for the league. “It seems to have done a good job so far.” 
Throughout the process, dissenters have also questioned if the bill is trying to address a 
problem that doesn’t exist.
“Overall, people know that Wyoming elections are secure, and they trust the results,” said Jenn Lowe, executive director of the policy center. “If it’s not broke, why fix it?” 
The broken part of Wyoming GOP elections may lie elsewhere, said Gail Symons, the writer for the nonpartisan blog, Civics307. She pointed out that there were more registered Republican voters in Wyoming who did not vote in the 2020 primary than all of the registered Democrats in the state. 
“The problem is not switching over, the problem is participation,” she said. 
Biteman has tried to pass this bill multiple times before. He urged the committee Tuesday night to “drag this carcass across the finish line.” 
A crossover voting ban is not a new concept in Wyoming politics. The Wyoming Republican Party has pushed for it, and so did the late GOP mega donor Foster Friess. 
Critics say the practice has resulted in moderate Republicans succeeding over their more conservative counterparts in crowded primaries, even though the state is deeply red. 
That includes Gov. Mark Gordon, who’s considered a moderate by the far right, though the data does not back the assertion that he owes his victory to crossover voting. 
Now, as Gordon and Cheney are up for reelection, the fear of crossover voting in Wyoming has become more acute, especially after Cheney has become the face of the anti-Trump movement, a move that angered state Republican activists but attracted support from moderates and Democrats. 
Cheney’s political enemies say she would benefit from crossover voting — specifically from critics of the former president. Last week, Trump issued a statement in support of the measure. 
“This critically important bill ensures that the voters in each party will separately choose their nominees for the General Election, which is how it should be!” he wrote. 
If passed, the bill would go into effect in time for this year’s primaries. Poll workers and poll managers would be expected to manually ensure that voters are not changing their party affiliation when they’re not supposed to be. Educating the public on this change would likely tack on an extra cost. 

“Voters need to be educated,” said Kai Schon, the Wyoming Elections Division director. 
Two county clerks told lawmakers they would be able to administer the change if the bill passes. After this election, the process of barring voters from changing their party affiliation outside of a certain time frame would become automated. 
The bill is now headed to the full Senate, where it would need to pass three votes.
 
This story was published on Feb. 24, 2022