Wyoming Voting Machines Fail Test, GOP Sues Clerk

On Thursday and Friday of last week, I received a call from a former candidate for governor in Wyoming Brent Bien.

He, along with others, were 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.

Secretary Of State Chuck Grey is scheduled to speak Wake Up Wyoming to address the issue. 

It's not that the machines were favoring any party or candidate. It's just that they were getting the count wrong. Much in the same way a human would if they had lost count along the way.

Since those calls to the Wake Up Wyoming morning radio show the Wyoming Republican Party filed a lawsuit Thursday against Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee.

Earlier in the 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 had made a decision to move quickly, thus ensuring integrity in the election.

According to WYOFILE, the Wyoming GOP Chairman W. Frank Eathorne said he doesn’t believe the county’s Republican Party is listed as a plaintiff in the case.

“The procedure needs to be done correctly, or we can’t trust the results,” Eathorne said. “Therefore, we can’t trust the machines and the outcome.”

Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee reached out to the voting company Electronic Systems & Software to arrange another test.

Brient Bien told me that Lee said she had not heard back from the company, and it would be another week before she could get back to him.

But Wyoming has its primaries coming soon.

August 20th, to be exact.

That's cutting it really close if they can fix the problem at all.

What if the company can't fix this in time, or do it in such a way that voters have confidence in the outcome?

Platte County Clerk Malcolm Ervin, a member of the County Clerks’ Association, said the likelihood of switching to a hand count “is practically zero.”

“I don’t think it prohibits you from testing [again] within that window,” Ervin said. (WyoFile).

Hand counting has not been very accurate,” Ervin said. “Humans partaking in repetitive tasks has potential for issues. And so, personally, I would be less confident if we fully hand counted [the ballots].”

 

There is also doubt that some counties could switch to hand counting so close to the election.

I have been asked by those who like to vote early how this has affected their vote.

That answer is that it would be the same as any other vote. You can vote early, but your vote is counted at the same time as anybody else's.