New initiative seeks to hand count ballots in Wyoming elections

County clerks assure electronic machines are secure.

JACKSON — The same group trying to cut property taxes in half is pushing for hand counting ballots in Wyoming elections.

Organizers Brent Bien, Cheryl Aguiar and Rich Weber filed their second ballot initiative in January with the Secretary of State’s Office. Now they are traveling across the state to showcase why they believe the change is necessary.

Their latest effort seeks to require county clerks to use a hand tabulation system instead of using electronic ballot processing machines.

County Clerks’ Association of Wyoming President Malcolm Ervin said election officers have full faith in the machines, testing and auditing procedures already in place in Wyoming.

But if voters were to pass the initiative, he said he would follow the law.

The inspiration for the hand counting ballot initiative came at the same time as one for property tax reduction. Bien said the trio would meet for hours at the Daily Bread Cafe in Ten Sleep last year and list out priorities that neither the Legislature nor the governor would take up.

“We just haven’t seen our Legislature really address these election integrity issues that we see around the state,” he said.

The group wants to wield the power given to Wyomingites in 1968. A ballot initiative is a lengthy and expensive avenue for citizens to pass a law without the Wyoming Legislature. Although there have been 36 attempts since its inception, only three ballot initiatives have been successful.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray and his office are certifying thousands of signatures collected for the property tax relief initiative to get on the 2026 ballot. For that to happen, signatures from more than 29,000 registered voters across two-thirds of Wyoming counties must be certified.

Although it’s a heavy lift, Gray backs the latest initiative.

“The people’s right to enact laws by initiative is fundamental to our republic, and I appreciate the committee of applicants’ efforts in this important issue,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “I have always been supportive of this issue, which is why I proposed it as an interim topic to the Wyoming Legislature to explore post-election hand audit procedures. Ultimately, our office will work to process the committee’s initiative in accordance with Wyoming law.”

Supporters held an event Saturday in Wheatland to make their case to the public.

“I would rather trust a group of four to six people, the people I know in my community, than someone who programs them from a personal or private organization,” said Jill Kaufman, a Wheatland resident who helped organize the event. “And we have no control over that.”

Saturday’s presentation featured Rick Weible, a computer consultant from South Dakota who pushed for election integrity laws in his home state. He has allegedly found 1,878 vulnerabilities in Wyoming machines.

He was brought in for his computer programming analyses, as well as a demonstration on the logistics of hand counting.

“So people can understand and see it’s not a spooky, complex, weird process,” organizer Rich Weber said.

Weible explained how hand counting is more reliable and less expensive, according to Kaufman.

The Wyoming voter has been doing thousands of hours of her own research on voting machine vulnerabilities and trying to get elected officials on board with the group’s concerns. Those included the following:  a private corporation controlling the electronic machines and algorithms; votes being flipped due to hacking, viruses or incorrect programming; an inability for people to see paper ballots up close and personal; and electronic poll books shutting down and wiping registered voters.

“So many people do not trust the system of electronic machines right now that they’re almost saying they’re not going to vote,” Kaufman said. “And that is just not acceptable.”

These points have been made to Wyoming county clerks.

Platte County Clerk Ervin was among the 50 or so people who attended Saturday’s gathering, and he listened.

There is no indication that the machines have been compromised or are inaccurate, but he said there’s always room for improvement. It’s not an easy task to hack into machines that aren’t connected to the internet because it would have to be done in person, he said.

“That’s why we take the measures we do to make sure that physical contact and control of the machines is carefully guarded and secured, and why we go through the testing procedures we do to ensure that they’re continuing to count accurately,” he said.

He welcomed residents to show up for public testing of the machines and post-election audits.

However, Ervin took notes on the presentation by Weible, who he said complimented the audit system in Wyoming.

“I thought it went well,” Ervin said. “He presented a number of suggestions. What I found interesting was that he did not advocate against the use of electronic voting systems. What he advocated for were some uniform testing procedures to ensure that we were testing the same and the right things.”

Weible also did a hand counting demo for the purpose of a backup, in case there was a catastrophic failure such as a widespread power outage or an organized effort to disrupt election equipment.

But that is different than a full-scale count of hundreds of thousands of ballots. Ervin said it’s hard to know how long counting ballots for all races on election night would take, and one single count would not be sufficient for accuracy.

The clerks have been giving feedback to the Secretary of State’s Office on the administrative challenges of hand tabulation, and he said Wyoming laws would have to be updated. The results must currently be certified by 5 p.m. Friday following the election, and clerks don’t have confidence it would be completed within that timeline, he said.

Organizer Weber said he believes it could be done an hour after the polls closed on Election Day.

“We only have about 225,000 in our registered voter ID system that participate in Wyoming,” he said.

He suggested election officials start counting when the polls open. The ballots would be passed to the back room to counters and election judges, instead of waiting until after the polls close.

This story was published on June 27, 2024.