Park County’s election results were made official on Thursday, with three more ballots added to the original, unofficial count. That put the final vote total for the Aug. 20 primary at 8,972 ballots cast.

The three provisional ballots added to the count came from voters who’d forgotten to bring their IDs to their polling location, but brought the required identification to the Park County Clerk’s Office by the end of Wednesday, said Elections Deputy Katie Johnson.

The additional votes — which came from the South Fork (Precinct 4-1), rural Meeteetse (8-3) and Heart Mountain/Ralston (21-1-1) — didn’t change any of the ultimate results.

They were among six provisional ballots that were filled out on Election Day, but set aside until the individuals’ eligibility to vote could be determined. Johnson said the other three were rejected by the county’s canvassing board on Thursday; two had been cast by voters who never provided the required identification and one came from a felon who wasn’t sure if his voting rights had been restored, she said.

A down ballot recount

The local primary also offered a reminder that every ballot matters, as a rural Cody area race for a seat on the Park County Republican Party’s Central Committee came down to a single vote.

Three candidates — Randy Merritt, Chris Bingley and James Causey — vied for two committeeman positions in Precinct 3-1. While Merritt easily secured one of the seats with 224 votes, Bingley edged out Causey by the narrowest of margins: 148-147.

Because Bingley and Causey were separated by less than 1%, that triggered an automatic recount on Thursday, which confirmed the results, Johnson said.

Precinct positioning

Republican and Democratic precinct committeemen and women help shape their parties’ positions, and on the GOP side, the precinct races have been part of a running battle over the direction of the party.

A total of 129 local Republicans ran for 86 seats within the GOP, with results suggesting the central committee will continue to feature a mix of more conservative and more moderate Republicans.

The Park County Patriots — a more conservative group also known as the Sons of Freedom and formerly known as the Park County Republican Men’s Club — endorsed 72 candidates and 46 were elected, according to a Tribune review. However, even as local Republicans embraced a slate of legislative candidates who ran to the right, both the winners and the losers of several legislative races wound up landing seats on the party’s central committee. They include House District 25 primary winner Paul Hoeft and ousted Rep. David Northrup (R-Powell); House District 24 winner Nina Webber and her opponent, Cody Mayor Matt Hall; House District 50 Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams (R-Cody) and her challenger, David Hill; and former City City Councilman Landon Greer, who fell to state Sen. Tim French in Senate District 18.

Some of the Republican precinct positions and most of the Democratic positions failed to draw any candidates, with only eight Democrats running for the party’s 44 precinct committee seats. The posts that failed to draw candidates will be filled through write-in votes — elections staff must manually review write-in votes to determine those results — or by appointment.

Meeteetse write-ins

Already, staff have sifted through 103 write-in votes for the Meeteetse Town Council, where there were no declared candidates for two council seats.

Seth Bennett received 28 write-ins, Colin Moody 26, Elizabeth Coggins five and incumbent Councilman Josh Blake three to potentially qualify for November’s general election ballot. (Blake was among four people who received three votes, but was “drawn by lots as the fourth potential nominee,” Johnson said.) Bennett, Moody, Coggins and Blake now need to decide whether they actually want to run for the office; if so, they must file paperwork at Meeteetse Town Hall by 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Election audit

As part of wrapping up the primary, the county’s canvas board and elections staff also performed an audit of 118 randomly selected ballot images, checking that the bubbles marked for Congress and the state Legislature on the scanned copy matched the votes tabulated by the machine. In each case, Johnson said, the machine had correctly read and recorded the voters’ markings.

It was part of a primary election that seemed to go smoothly. It took some extra time for election judges to reconcile voter numbers at the Cody Auditorium on election night, which delayed final results, but beyond that, “everything went well as far as I have heard,” Johnson said Friday.

The Wyoming State Canvassing Board is set to officially close out the state’s primary on Wednesday morning, when it will certify the statewide results and candidates moving on to the general election.