This week we’re talking about what to expect once the polls close at 7 p.m. on Nov. 5 and election officials begin to tally the vote. Wyoming Public Radios’s statehouse reporter, Chris Clements, and managing editor, Nicky Ouellet, joined news director, Kamila Kudelska, on this episode of Road to Cheyenne.
To hear more about voting in Wyoming, listen to this previous conversation with Converse County’s election clerk. Or check out WPR's election guide, which includes FAQs on voting and election security.
KK: I’m eager to pop under the hood of election night proceedings, but first: Chris, any last minute updates about legislative races around the state?
CC: Yes. For one thing, a number of candidates across the state have dropped out of their races. In the case of House District 51 in Sheridan County, former state Sen. Bruce Burns dropped out. He was an Independent running against GOP candidate Laurie Bratten. Bratten is endorsed by the Freedom Caucus, so that’s one more seat for them.
KK: Anywhere else?
CC: Candidates also dropped out in races against Reps. Clarence Styvar (R-Cheyenne) and Ocean Andrew (R-Laramie). Styvar is aligned with the Freedom Caucus, Andrew is Freedom Caucus-endorsed. In House District 57, Julie Jarvis is now running unopposed. She beat out Freedom Caucus member Rep. Jeanette Ward (R-Casper) in a hotly contested race.
If you’re in either Andrew’s or Jarvis’ district, you’ll see their opponent on the ballot, since they dropped out after ballots were printed.
KK: So with these dropouts, where does the Freedom Caucus stand with gaining a majority in the House?
CC: Heading into the general, they have 26 seats based on official endorsements and aligned votes. As of today, by my calculations, the Freedom Caucus stands to gain as many as six seats on Tuesday if at all their contested races go their way. That would get them to 32 seats, which would make a majority. But it’s a fluid situation. We’ll find out when lawmakers start casting votes in January.
KK: And we’re about to dive into the process behind ballots getting counted and election certification, which is also a fluid process since some counties do things a little bit differently. Chris and Nicky, you both spoke with county clerks in the state. What did they tell you that happens if you’re still in line to vote at 7 p.m.?
CC: I asked Fremont County Clerk Julie Freese that.
Julie Freese: If you have long lines at 7 p.m., we instruct our judges to get everybody inside the building and lock the doors so that we have a total ending area at 7 p.m. then.
KK: So in other words, if you’re in line at 7 p.m., stay in line. But many Wyomingites have already voted early or absentee. How’s turnout been so far?
Nicky Ouellet: Clerks around the state are saying: pretty high. As of midday Nov. 1, over 100,000 Wyomingites have already voted. That’s just 23,000 votes shy of the number of voters in the primary back in August.
KK: Lots of work for election clerks, judges and volunteers. When can we expect results?
CC: In many counties, we’ll have unofficial results within a couple hours. Clerks are trying to hit a 10:30 p.m. deadline on election night. If they won’t have unofficial results by then, they need to tell the secretary of state and explain why – like maybe a storm’s closed roads and they can’t get results from a polling site, something like that.
KK: I want to hear about official results, too, but let’s stay with election night for a minute.
NO: Platte County Clerk Malcolm Ervin told me these few hours after polls close are some of the most exciting and terrifying for a county clerk. That’s when they start counting ballots.
Malcolm Ervin: You think it's gone well. But really, at about 7:30 is when you find out if it has or has not gone as well as you think.
NO: Ervin says they prepare for as much as they can – what to do if there’s a fire, what to do if roads are closed, increased security this year because of threats around the country – but there’s also just stuff that pops up unexpectedly that he’ll have to deal with.
CC: There are two ways ballots are counted, depending on how they’re cast.
NO: If you vote in-person, you scan your own ballot through the tabulating machine. This machine is from Election Systems & Software. All counties in the state have used ES&S equipment since 2020. These machines are not connected to the internet. They look like copy machines.
Throughout the day, voters are putting their ballots into the machines, and the machines are taking a scanned picture of each ballot. As soon as the last person in line at 7 p.m. has voted, the machines start running results.
Each machine dumps its numbers onto, basically a USB memory stick, and election staff escort that little memory drive back to the county's election headquarters.
ME: Those results are then taken from a media stick. It just looks like a USB jump drive. Put into what's called Electionware, which is some software we have. It's a standalone computer, not connected to the Internet in any way. And it then compiles all the results from all of those pieces of equipment into one nice package, one complete report, so that we can send it to the secretary of state and to the public.
CC: And those memory sticks aren’t escorted by just anyone, they have special couriers.
JF: The courier, by statute, can be a law enforcement officer. I have two of those. And then the rest of them are election judges.
CC: Any registered voter who’s not running for office can become an election judge. You just need to get in touch with your county or municipal clerk, or the chairperson of your political party. The clerk appoints election judges and runs trainings.
KK: Nicky, you mentioned a second way ballots are counted.
NO: Yes, mailed absentee ballots are a little different. Here’s what Converse County Clerk Karen Rimmer says:
KR: We open all of our absentee ballots on the Thursday before the election. We have to notify the secretary of state of that. We do that with what we call our absentee counting board, which is a bipartisan team of Republicans and Democrats. This is a process that's open to the public.
NO: This process is sorting the absentee ballot envelopes by precinct, opening them up and running them through the tabulators – but they won’t run any results reports or add these ballots to the final vote count until after the polls close.
So then on election night, all these USB drives are coming into each county’s election headquarters. It varies by county how or where the public can watch from here on out.
KR: Once all the results are in, then we post our results on our website. And then we also have to send those results to the secretary of state's office. Once we send them, they actually make a phone call to us, and they verify what we have sent. So that way, they know that it came from us, and we know that they've received it.
KK: Is there any hand counting of ballots?
NO: In limited cases, like special districts that are voting a ballot with only one item on it, they can. But generally, no. However, there’s a lot of human eyes and hands reconciling lists of who should’ve received ballots against who returned ballots, and parts of auditing the results is done with human eyes.
ME: There has been no incontrovertible evidence or irrefutable evidence that we've been presented with that our machines used here in Wyoming, and specifically Platte County, have been corrupted.
CC: The Fremont County clerk told me hand counting doesn’t happen for a pretty simple reason.
JF: If you look at ballots, people are creative. They don't follow instructions. So now, if you get a ballot that is partially filled in and the machine knows what to read, but we are then supposed to be subjective as humans and decide, was that a vote, or was that not?
KK: So the numbers that clerks get to the secretary of state on general election night are not official. When do we get official results?
CC: Counties need to certify results by the Friday after the election, and the state certifies the week after that.
NO: The county canvassing board is the election clerk, and also two representatives from different political parties that the clerk appoints. The public can attend. There’s a lot of steps that go into certifying election results. Here’s Karen Rimmer with Converse County again:
KR: Basically I just give them all of the information: the good, the bad, the ugly. We go through poll books. We go through reports. We go through all of the write-ins that were received. Any errors, anything that happened at the election, if there was an incident known at the time of any felons voting or attempting to vote or non-resident alien, that kind of thing. Basically they [have] all the information and then they [determine] if they feel the results of the election are true and accurate based on everything that happened. Then they decide if they want to certify those results or not.
KK: To clarify, when Rimmer is saying “they,” that’s the two representatives from different political parties that are chosen by the clerk? Are they vetted?
CC: Appointed by the clerk. They take an oath of office and are paid just like election judges.
KK: Do they find issues and if yes, what happens?
NO: Oh they do – like in Sheridan County this year, the ballot has a wrong instruction for a race. It says “vote for one” but should say “vote for two.” That could be deemed a material error. If that happens, the election for that race would need to be redone.
CC: Another built-in check that might turn up issues is the post-election ballot audit. It happens within two days of the election and is part of what the state canvassing board reviews. In the audit, the secretary of state picks a random, representative number of ballots from each county. And then, as Ervin explains:
ME: We take those ballot images and we compare it to what's called the cast vote record. What that cast vote record is doing is saying, I saw a vote for Nicky in this race. And then you look at the ballot. Sure enough, that's a vote for Nicky. I saw a vote for Malcolm. Sure enough, that's a vote for Malcolm. And what we've experienced, and this is true with my colleagues, is every time we've done this, we have had no indication – we haven't had a single instance where the equipment tabulated other than how the voter intended for their vote to be cast.
KK: Got it. But if people are still worried, who can request a recount?
CC: A candidate, at their expense. Though they get reimbursed if the recount changes the winner.
NO: A recount would happen automatically if the winner only wins by 1 percent of votes.
CC: In Fremont County, the clerk there told me she wouldn’t be surprised to see recounts happen this year. She has eight school districts that have races for their boards, and with a ton of candidates running, they’re getting pretty controversial.
KK: So after the county certified the election, are results official yet?
CC: Not quite. The state canvassing board also needs to meet. That happens by the Wednesday the week after the election.
NO: The state canvassing board includes: secretary of state, governor, state treasurer and state auditor. They review all of the issues leading up to and on election day and how they were addressed, tests of voting equipment, voter turnout, post election audits, recounts, write-in candidates and all 23 county’s results. The public can attend and comment. Then they certify the election. It takes a couple of hours.
KK: And then Wyoming’s results are official?
CC: Absolutely.
KK: One of the big concerns I've heard this election cycle is about non-citizens voting. Did the clerks you talk to say if they've seen non-citizens trying to vote this year?
CC: Julie Freese in Fremont County told me that historically, it’s been a rare occurrence. She also said it usually amounted to a clerical error. Usually, people who recently became a citizen previous to the election just forgot to update their drivers’ licenses with the Department of Motor Vehicles.
JF: My recollection was, when I notified them that said, ‘Hey, when I put you into the WyoReg system, it came back that you're noncitizen.’ They brought me the paperwork that made them a citizen.
KK: Going back to the certification of results, can anyone object to or challenge them?
NO: Yes, a registered voter in the county can contest the results. That has to happen within 14 days of certification.
Platte County Clerk Malcolm Ervin told me the grounds for a contest are misconduct or material negligence of an election official. That’s like if a candidate isn’t eligible to hold office, or they bribed a voter or election official, or illegal votes were cast or legal votes weren’t counted.
ME: It can't just be, ‘This doesn't look right to me, I want a deeper investigation.’ It's got to be a specific allegation. That's unfortunately something we're not seeing very often. We're hearing large dispersions cast or umbrella concerns, but the specific concern is what we need with data, with proof, that something actually happened.
NO: Ervin also said a contest like this is very rare in Wyoming. He says the kinds of things someone would contest about are usually already known by the time the canvass board certifies results.
KK: Zooming out for a moment, Chris, you spoke with a member of the Freedom Caucus recently. Did he report any concerns that the caucus has with how the general election is going?
CC: Yeah, I asked Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (R-Wheatland) about that. He mentioned issues at the national level, but here in Wyoming:
Jeremy Haroldson: Wyoming's in a lot better place. Our secretary of state's doing an amazing job. Our county clerks are phenomenal.
KK: Glad to hear things are running smoothly. Thanks, you two.
Just a reminder election day is Nov. 5. You do need to bring an ID and you can register to vote at your polling location.
Find your polling location here.
