A letter to Gray

To the Editor:

The following letter was addressed to Chuck Gray, Wyoming Secretary of State, on Oct. 8, 2024.

Dear Mr. Gray,

The Wyoming Constitution provides two mechanisms for amending the state’s constitution — a legislative process and a state constitutional convention. Wyoming requires a simple majority vote (50% plus 1) for voters to approve constitutional amendments.

Legislature: A two-thirds vote is required during one legislative session for the Wyoming State Legislature to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot. That amounts to a minimum of 42 votes in the Wyoming House of Representatives and 21 votes in the Wyoming State Senate, assuming no vacancies. Amendments do not require the governor’s signature to be referred to the ballot.

Constitutional convention: According to Section 3 of Article 20 of the Wyoming Constitution, a two-thirds (66.67%) vote is required during one legislative session for the Wyoming.State Legislature to place a constitutional convention question on the ballot. If a simple majority of voters approve the question, then the legislature needs to call for a convention during its next session.

Article 4, Section 3 of the Wyoming Constitution, as printed by your office, has an annotation which encourages, possibly even directs, citizens to misconstrue said Section of the Wyoming State Constitution as being null and void.

The annotation in question implies that a federal judge has authority to alter a state constitution.

Please amend and re-print my state Constitution without this annotation and put out a recall for all flawed copies circulating in my state. This recall should include all printed Wyoming State Constitutions containing this flaw since 1992.

Thank you