‘This is a human error’ — Carbon County Clerk Gwynn Bartlett explains Weston County election controversy
SARATOGA — “I think it’s important for us as clerks to all know what happened so we can prevent the same thing from happening again,” Carbon County Clerk Gwynn Bartlett recently told the Board of Carbon County Commissioners in reference to the ballot errors reported in Weston County.
In her post-election update as county clerk, Bartlett also voiced her opposition to hand-counting ballots, a process which was given a trial run in Campbell County.
Wrong Ballots
In Carbon County, said Bartlett, the general election was conducted with no issues.
A total of 6,446 votes were cast, with approximately 2,000 of those being absentee ballots. The Carbon County Clerk’s Office also saw a lot of registrations on the day of the general election, which is allowed in Wyoming.
“We registered over 1,000 people. I personally registered a lot of those. A lot of first time voters in their 30s, 40s, 50s. They have never voted before, so that was exciting,” said Bartlett. “Turnout was 105%. That leads a lot of people to think there’s fraud because you can’t have more voters than you have registered people and obviously we have same day voter registration.”
While there were no issues reported in Carbon County, the same couldn’t be said for other parts of the state.
In Weston County, initial results indicated that incumbent Chip Neiman had only received 166 votes with 1,229 undervotes, according to reporting from the News Letter Journal.
Weston County Clerk Becky Haddock told the News Letter Journal on November 6 the matter was under investigation by Election Systems & Software (ES&S), but not before telling the Newcastle newspaper the undervotes were a result of a “protest vote” regarding a resolution by the Board of Weston County Commissioners to declare vacancies in the Wyoming Legislature.
According to the News Letter Journal, Neiman supported the resolution.
“I do want to say this was not a machine issue,” said Bartlett. “The machines work great, they count ballots appropriately and correctly. It was a human error.”
According to Bartlett, while Weston County likely had its machines programmed by ES&S, her office prefers to do it locally as it saves her office up to $20,000.
“They [Weston County] approved their ballots to be printed with whoever their ballot printer is and then there were two errors they noticed. [They] got those fixed and then got new ballots printed,” said Bartlett. “The clerk there [Haddock], I believe, did not think the first ones had ever been printed, so when ballots arrived she thought those were the right ones. (She) utilized those ballots and then had a second set of ballots come and utilized those as well. She had some incorrect ballots.”
Bartlett explained to the BOCCC that, if a ballot is not printed properly and is different from how a tabulation machine is programmed, it will cause errors.
“The ballot might say ‘Joe Blow’ next to it, but it’s going to count it differently if the ballot is not printed properly for what it [the machine] was programmed for,” said Bartlett. “This is not a machine error. I want to be really clear about that, this is a human error.”
‘Adamantly Disagree’
At the request of Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Haddock ultimately performed a hand recount of the ballots cast in Weston County.
This process confirmed the error reported in Neiman’s race, according to reporting from WyoFile.
The recount also included the two races for Weston County Commissioner, which also showed some discrepancy, according to reporting from the News Letter Journal.
“I know this is giving the hand-count people some ammunition to say ‘We need a hand-count’ and I adamantly disagree with that,” said Bartlett.
Bartlett isn’t the only county clerk to disagree with hand counting ballots.
Earlier this year, Campbell County Clerk Cindy Lovelace conducted a trial run on October 4 of hand counting ballots in a presidential race, according to reporting from the Gillette News Record.
Lovelace estimated the cost of hand counting ballots to be anywhere from approximately $99,000 to nearly $1.4 million, depending on the amount of training each hand counter would need. She also estimated there would need to be approximately 2,220 people to be able to count nearly 20,000 ballots in four hours.
Commissioner John Johnson agreed with Bartlett’s comment on hand counting, saying that more human involvement would lead to more human errors.
Chairwoman Sue Jones added, “Twenty-two other clerks with no issues and then Weston County’s kind of drawing attention, anyway.”
Further Education
This wasn’t the first instance this year of Bartlett attempting to educate the public on the election process in Wyoming.
Following the primary election in August, the county clerk encouraged people to educate themselves on the process while also being passionate about it.
“I get being passionate, but when our integrity is questioned, it’s insulting. Especially by people who don’t understand the process and nobody shows up at our testing and only half the people who are registered are voting. I think that’s an issue,” said Bartlett at the August 26 meeting of the BOCCC. “I hope to encourage more people to be involved. Come to the testing, call our office, ask questions. We’re there to help.”
Her comments after the primary election followed some very public disagreements between Gray and the county clerks in the state over the use of ballot drop boxes.
The Secretary of State had also requested a retest of voting equipment just eight days before the primary election following a formal complaint from the Wyoming Republican Party.
That complaint came following a faulty test by the Laramie County Clerk’s Office. Since then, the Wyoming Republican Party has censured Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee twice and has called for her resignation.
This story was published on November 29, 2024.