Wyoming Secretary Of State Responds To Voicemail Threat

Last week Wyoming's Secretary Of State Chuck Gray received a threatening voice message regarding election integrity.

Gray has since posted that audio on Facebook.

He called me and asked to come on Wyoming's morning talk radio program Wake Up Wyoming to discuss the message.

I began the conversation by playing the first minute of the threats, deleting any offensive language.

You can hear the threatening call below. Expect some foul language. Then you can hear the conversation I had with Chuck Gray regarding the call and who he thinks is responsible.

Secretary Gray blames an article in WyoFile for the call.

The audio below is my interview with Chuck Gray regarding the threatening call.

During the interview, I asked him if he had confidence in those voting machines now that they had been retested.

He went on to explain why he, as Secretary Of State, was asking for Wyoming voting machines to be retested.

As requested there was a second test of voting machines, in time for the August 20th primary in Wyoming.

THE RESULT:  All systems are normal. The count was good.

The test was held in the basement of the Laramie County Courthouse on Tuesday with about 40 people in attendance, according to Cowboy State Daily. 

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray had formally requested the retesting of several voting machines, with less than two weeks to go before Wyoming's primary election.

The Secretary sent out a letter on Monday to those county clerks after concerns over voting machine tests that seemed to fail.

The Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee takes a much harsher view, claiming that the Wyoming Republican Party is attempting to “disrupt” the upcoming primary election.

Secretary Of State Chuck Gray called Wake Up Wyoming regarding the voting machine failure in Laramie County.

From where he sits the wasn't a result of operator error when it came to the problem with the tests of Wyoming's voting machines.

He said during that interview that there was probably nothing wrong with the machines.

Procedures were not followed correctly, according to the secretary. Those county clerks need to try again, running the test according to written procedures.

You can listen to Monday's interview with Secretary Gray in the audio file below.

Let's review the history of what led up to this second test.

On Thursday and Friday of last week, I received a call on Wyoming's morning talk radio show from a former candidate for Wyoming governor Brent Bien.

He, along with others, was heading down to Cheyenne to look into alleged flawed voting machine tests.

Laramie County GOP Chairman Taft Love noticed that during the tests the ballots fed into the machine had the same number of votes for each candidate no matter what numbers were fed into the machine.

You can listen to that call from Brent Bien below.

After the interview, I was asked by callers why these tests were not done earlier.

The secretary texted the following response:

The statute states that they should happen 2 weeks or more before the election. Our memo was sent out months ago.
The clerks are tasked with scheduling them under state law
The only upper band would be the certification of candidates, which happens in mid June
And the printing of ballots
Which happens in mid to late June

It's not that the machines were favoring any party or candidate. It's just that they were getting the count wrong.

Last week the Laramie County GOP filed a complaint with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office over the same issue.

The Wyoming GOP executive committee decided to move quickly to ensure the integrity of the election.

That is why the second test was performed, on Tuesday.

The original problem seems to be operator error with how the test was conducted.

At this point, all parties seem satisfied with the results.