Weston County mix-up rekindles push to ditch voting machines in Wyoming

A Weston County vote miscount from the 2024 general election — and a year of fallout since — has once again put Wyoming’s election machinery in the crosshairs. The state already uses paper ballots almost everywhere, but a growing bloc of lawmakers wants to go further and outlaw electronic tabulators entirely. If that happens, Wyoming would stand alone as the only state to hand count every ballot.

The spark was a strange election night in November, when results showed House Speaker Chip Neiman — running unopposed — logging just 166 votes while more than 1,200 voters supposedly skipped his race. It turned out Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock had mixed correct and misprinted ballots. A hand tally eventually straightened things out, but the damage to public trust lingered, and a legislative subcommittee formed this summer to investigate Hadlock met Monday in Casper.

Neiman told the panel he won’t let the issue slide, arguing that paper ballots plus hand counts would have prevented the mess from the start. His words landed with applause, and they carry extra heft: as speaker and a Freedom Caucus member, he can fast-track — or bury — bills in a House where his faction holds sway. That could give a hand-count measure more traction in the upcoming session than similar efforts that fizzled in past years.

The political push isn’t new. Park County Republicans chased hand counts in 2022. In 2024, organizers tried to force the issue through a ballot initiative. This year, Rep. Scott Smith and former Sen. Darin Smith introduced mirror bills to eliminate tabulators and even electronic pollbooks. Secretary of State Chuck Gray has encouraged lawmakers to keep that door open, later emphasizing he backs hand counts and audits and aligning his election-security vision with former President Trump’s. In August, Gray and the Freedom Caucus supported the Trump administration’s plan to halt mail-in ballots and voting machines nationwide — an executive order that hasn’t yet materialized but is expected.

Monday’s hearing focused less on the initial miscount and more on Hadlock’s post-election audit to Gray’s office, which reported no errors despite discrepancies in Neiman’s race and a county commission contest. Wyoming clerks must run a post-election audit using a University of Wyoming statistical method created under former Secretary of State Ed Buchanan; its findings help the State Canvassing Board decide whether to certify results. Gray criticized Gov. Mark Gordon for declining to pursue Hadlock’s removal, while the governor’s counsel said his office reviewed Gray’s investigation. Gordon later said he takes election integrity seriously but didn’t see evidence of misconduct or malfeasance that would justify ousting an elected clerk.

Hadlock skipped Monday’s meeting despite a subpoena, and lawmakers said they’ll seek criminal charges. Other clerks did show. Platte County’s Malcolm Ervin, who leads the County Clerks’ Association, called the Weston episode an isolated failure and said clerks are responding together by backing an audit working group, expanding training for clerks and election staff, and tightening equipment-testing standards. Fremont County Clerk Julie Freese added that clerks trained on hand counting last week to be ready if lawmakers change the rules, stressing their goal is simple: every eligible voter gets counted, and counted correctly.

Tensions flared at times — one speaker lobbed a slur at a clerk—and the work isn’t done. The subcommittee plans a virtual meeting Monday as the Legislature weighs whether Wyoming should trade machines for muscle and become the nation’s first full hand-count state.

The original story by Maggie Mullen for WyoFile.