Committee backs bills to require paper ballots and prohibit ballot drop boxes

Yahoo

18 hours ago

CHEYENNE — Legislators voted to sponsor bills addressing the state's use of paper ballots and ballot drop boxes during Friday's Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee meeting.
The two bills, which would require paper ballots be the default voting method in each county and would prohibit the use of ballot drop boxes, are in alignment with legislation that Secretary of State Chuck Gray backed earlier this year.
During the meeting, Gray repeatedly referred to President Trump's executive order 'Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,' saying these bills are essential to achieving the president's objectives. The bills also align with Gray's 'election integrity' agenda.
Wyoming Republican Party Chairman Bryan Miller echoed Gray's concerns.
'National politics have driven a big distrust in the election system, and that distrust is very prevalent in Wyoming at the moment,' Miller said. 'Bottom line, the perception is the reality.'
Though Gray and Miller insisted that these bills are essential to election security, opponents of the bills noted that they responded to perception, rather than addressing any documented errors.
Wyoming League of Women Voters President Linda Barton told the committee that they should heavily consider the input of the county clerks, and avoid supporting legislation that takes away local control for the sake of national agendas.
'The bills before you today do not meet that standard,' Barton told the committee. 'Instead, they erect barriers; impose costly, unfunded mandates; reduce access, and risk undermining public trust in our elections.'
Barton noted that voter access should be considered alongside election integrity.
'We must carefully consider the real-life effects on both election administration and voter access,' Barton said. 'For many Wyoming voters — shift workers, farmers, ranchers, people with health challenges, and those facing immediate harsh weather — barriers to voting are more than theoretical.'
The committee was originally set to hear 11 bills Friday morning, but later voted to only work four for the sake of time.
The committee also worked on two draft bills, one prohibiting 'ballot harvesting' and one addressing voter registration procedures, which will be revisited during their November meeting. Ballot harvesting refers to the practice of individuals collecting and submitting completed absentee or mail-in ballots on behalf of other voters, rather than the voters submitting their own ballots directly.
Paper ballots
The committee voted to sponsor the draft bill on pen and paper ballots, which would require counties to use pen and paper as the default method to mark ballots for Wyoming elections, with exceptions for people with disabilities.
Laramie County is the only county in the state that doesn't currently provide pen and paper ballots as a default measure. Instead, the county uses an 'express voting' system as its default. Voters insert a card into a machine, select their candidates on a touchscreen and receive a printed ballot with a list of their votes.
Gray specifically took issue with the barcodes produced during the process, which encodes the voters' selections.
'Relying on barcodes decreases the trust in our elections, because electors cannot verify that the barcodes on their ballots correspond with the candidates they voted for,' Gray said. 'This bill will increase confidence in our elections, because voters will trust that their ballot was counted accurately when they fill them out with pen and paper.'
These electronic voting systems are largely used to increase accessibility for voters who may not be able to fill out a paper ballot without assistance. Gray noted that, further down the line, he would support accessing options that are still accessible, but do not include barcodes.
There have been no documented cases of inconsistencies between barcodes and printed votes in Wyoming, Platte County Clerk Malcolm Ervin told the committee.
There has been, however, one documented case in 2023, in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where the voter's selection shown on the machine-generated code differed from the selections that appeared on the human-readable printout, Ervin said.
Further investigation showed that the code accurately reflected the voter's choices, but a programming error had caused the text version to be incorrect. The votes were tabulated correctly based on the code.
'That same coding error is not exclusive to the express vote,' Ervin said. 'It could happen on the paper ballot, as well.'
These errors have strengthened the argument for testing counting systems prior to an election, as opposed to restricting methods of voting, Ervin said.
The other issue with the bill is how difficult it would be for Laramie County to comply with the bill by the 2026 election cycle.
Laramie County is the largest county in the state, home to 16% of the voting population. In an email correspondence presented to the committee by Mary Lankford, a lobbyist for the County Clerks Association of Wyoming, Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee wrote that the bill would 'completely upend Laramie County's elections, a recipe for disaster for Wyoming's largest county that could impact elections across the state.'
According to Lee, Laramie County would have to completely change its operational plans and would have to acquire additional voting equipment.
That equipment would also have to be installed and tested by the vendor prior to undergoing additional required logic and accuracy tests.
'Laramie County does not have the staff, money or time to make such a drastic change in voting operations,' Lee wrote.
The committee voted amend the bill's effective date to 'effective immediately' and then voted to sponsor the draft bill, with Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, and co-chair Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, opposed.
Ballot boxes
The committee also voted to sponsor a bill that would prohibit the use of drop boxes for the delivery of ballots. Instead, absentee ballots would have to be mailed in or delivered by hand.
'I remain convinced that the use of unstaffed and unattended ballot drop boxes is not secure or the best means for our state,' Gray told the committee, referencing a few instances in which ballot boxes were tampered with, including recent arson cases in Oregon.
One of the major concerns with prohibiting the use of ballot boxes is limiting voter access. Many blue-collar workers in Wyoming have jobs that require long hours, Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, told the committee.
'My concern all along with this bill was the fact that it was eliminating the ability of a working man or woman to come into town at 7 o'clock at night and drop their ballot off,' Landen said.
Gray responded to Landen's concern, saying that the working man was a priority of himself and Trump.
'Working people support these measures,' Gray said. 'There's no question about that.' He offered no supporting evidence to back up that assertion, however.
Yin also pointed out that mailing ballots would effectively send them out of the state, as Wyoming no longer has a local U.S. Postal Service distribution center. The nearest distribution center is in Denver, Colorado, or Salt Lake City, Utah.
'It goes out of the state and then it comes back,' Yin said. 'And so how do I know that my ballot is more secured in the postal collection box than a box that's in the county courthouse in my county and will never leave the county?'
Gray noted that election-related mail should not leave the state.
The committee rejected an amendment to allow voters to deliver their ballots to a drop box in a county or other governmental entity's building; the box would be accessible from the building's exterior.
The amendment would have required the drop box to remain under constant video surveillance, and only a county clerk or their designee would have access to the secured receptacle.
The committee amended the bill's effective date to 'effective immediately' and then voted to sponsor the draft bill, with Landen, Yin and Case opposed.
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