Laramie County retests voting machines after lawsuit filed

CHEYENNE — Approximately 50 people gathered in the entryway of the Laramie County Governmental Complex on Tuesday for what some passersby could have mistaken for a crowd waiting to attend a high-profile court case.

Instead, they were waiting to attend a viewing of a test of some of the ballot counting machines, called tabulators, after an initial public test session led to an official investigation and a lawsuit.

After going through security, the group, primarily composed of members of the Wyoming Republican Party, were ushered downstairs to a portion of the county clerk’s office, where the tabulators were on display.

Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee and her staff described and displayed how the machines function.

Once the test began, there were two DS450 tabulators — which are used to count absentee and recount ballots — running while members of the public took pictures, filmed and asked questions of the public officials throughout the approximately four-hour testing process.

Per state statute, these tests are required before elections are conducted to ensure the machines are functioning properly.

However, when they were first tested on Aug. 5, the way the test was conducted did not meet the requirements of state statute, so they were tested a second time.

This error concerned the test ballots that were put through the machine, as they all had the same number of votes for each candidate.

According to state statute, the test ballots are required to show a different number of votes for each candidate to demonstrate that the machine can count the votes for the different candidates.

On Tuesday, the test ballots were filed using the “one to max formula,” meaning that the first candidate received one vote, the second received two and so on to meet legal requirements.

This second test came after Laramie County Republican Party Chairman Taft Love filed a complaint about the first test, leading to an investigation by the Laramie County District Attorney’s office, a lawsuit filed against the Laramie County Clerk’s office by the Wyoming GOP and a letter from Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray calling for a new test.

According to a news release Monday from Gray’s office, at least five other counties in Wyoming also failed to meet the statutory requirement and were asked to conduct new tests. He failed to identify those counties in the release, however, Dallas Tyrrell, a member of the Laramie County GOP, said that if the machines worked Tuesday and the ballots were counted correctly, then he would think they work great.

“That’s all we’re after,” he said. “We just wanted to make sure the machines are working properly, and they’re calibrated and following state statute. Clearly, we’re not able to fit the requirement for the testing to be done within the state statute, unfortunately, but as long as the machines are working great, at least it’ll keep me sleeping at night, knowing that everything’s working properly.”

The public demonstration was also attended by some Wyoming lawmakers and political candidates on the primary election ballot, including House District 43 Republican challenger Ann Lucas, who said she wasn’t sure if machine tabulators are more efficient than hand counting the votes, even if the machines functioned properly on Tuesday.

“I don’t know that we can prepare for every error that could happen,” said Lucas, who is running against incumbent Rep. Dan Zwonitzer.

House District 42 Rep. Ben Hornock, who is seeking reelection this year, said he would have liked to see the machines handle ballots that had been crumbled up, spilled on or chewed up by a dog a little bit, stating that may be how some of the absentee ballots are received by the clerk’s office.

Other attendees expressed similar concerns, stating that tabulators had jammed up a bit at the initial testing, in addition to not meeting state statute requirements.

While Lee did not test the machine with these types of damaged ballots, she did say that the machines sometimes do jam, but that has no impact on the number of votes counted for each ballot submitted.

When addressing ballots that arrive in conditions illegible to the machine, Lee said they recreate the ballot in a legible form through a process called duplicating.

“That involves three people, at least two from different parties,” she said. “You have one person reading the damaged ballot, the other person is marking that ballot, and the other one is observing to make sure that it’s an exact match. Then, you run a fresh one through so every ballot counts.”

Becky Evans, a member of the Laramie County Democratic Party and a precinct committeewoman, said she trusts the results of the tabulators, and called the redoing of the test a waste of taxpayer money and a dog-and-pony show.

“It’s just obscene, excessive use of county funds that could go to so many other things, like projects to help families, projects to do all different kinds of stuff, instead of paying for a four-and-a-half-hour retest,” she said. “And I think it’s absurd.”

She said she had no issues with the first test, and that those seeking legal challenges to the county clerk’s office are trying to find ways to force a hand-count of ballots. Evans said that is historically and scientifically less accurate than machine counting ballots.

A report from the States United Democracy Center found that hand-counted ballots are more complex, more expensive, take longer and are more prone to error. In Mohave County, Arizona’s 2023 hand-count test run, a deck of 850 ballots had roughly 36 races per ballot. The hand count produced errors in 46 cases, meaning each of those 46 races would have to be retallied if that had not been a test run.

Connie Czarnecki, vice chairwoman of the Laramie County GOP, said that if testing goes smoothly, she thinks it could dispel some of her concerns with the tabulators, but she’s still not sure if it would be a better alternative to hand counting ballots.

“Nothing’s ever perfect, and the way it’s done is never perfect,” she said.

Caleb Wilkins, counsel of record for the Wyoming GOP case against Laramie County Clerk’s Office, said there are issues with other machines in Laramie County that handle a statistical majority of the ballots cast in each election as they handle the day-of ballots, the DS200 machines.

Wilkins said that at the certification of the DS200 machines about a month ago, there were “similar problems, a little bit worse than these (DS450 machines).”

When asked about this, Lee said that there were no issues with the DS200 machines when they were certified.

This story was published on August 14, 2024.