Park County commissioners reaffirmed on Tuesday that this year’s election results will again be tabulated by machine.

While a local group has lobbied for hand counting over the past several years, tabulating results by machine “is something that we have to do by statute,” Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said ahead of a unanimous vote to accept the use of electronic tabulators.

Thiel added that, after watching the current system and learning about the checks in place, “I’m convinced this is a true, good, safe way to run the election — much better than alternative B.”

Though the machines will be used to tally the official results, a portion of local ballots will be counted by hand this year as a way to double-check the tabulators’ work. That’s due to a new audit process created by the Wyoming Legislature.

Lawmakers considered a couple bills that would have completely switched the state over to hand counting, but those and a slew of other election-related measures failed to pass the recent Budget Session.

Outside of the Park County Clerk’s Office switching from paper to electronic pollbooks — a move the office says will increase security and expedite the voting process — the 2026 elections will look much the same as they did two years ago. With separate votes on Tuesday, commissioners agreed that the county will operate the same polling places, keep the same voting precincts … and use the same equipment to count the votes.

Conflicting interpretations of law

Doubts about election results surged nationally after the 2020 elections, when then-Republican President Donald Trump claimed his loss to then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden was due to fraud.

In the spring of 2022, a group of local residents approached the Park County commissioners and asked to count that year’s ballots by hand — after the votes had been officially tabulated by the machines. They later sought to manually recount the ballots from the 2020 election.

However, then-Attorney General Bridget Hill and Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric advised the commissioners that they couldn’t turn the ballots over to volunteers nor could the results be counted by hand.

The group returned to the commission ahead of the 2024 cycle and asked the board to completely scrap the machines, arguing they could opt for a hand count. Specifically, they cited a state law that says “the board of county commissioners of each county may adopt for use … any electronic voting system authorized by the law.” 

Secretary of State Chuck Gray and the hand counting group believe the word “may” means the commissioners don’t have to use machines. However, another interpretation — backed by the county’s legal counsel — is that it simply allows the commissioners to choose among any certified electronic systems. (As it stands, the county’s current tabulators from Election Systems & Software are the only ones authorized in the state.)

‘The buck stops with us’

At Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Kelly Simone noted the legal advice indicating that ballots must be counted by machine. Simone quoted in part from a section of state statute that says, “each individual vote shall be determined by the voting equipment and shall not be determined subjectively by human count tabulation.”

She questioned whether it was even necessary for the board to vote on the issue, because “this is mandated under Wyoming statute … that we use machines.”

But Clerk Colleen Renner said she wanted the commissioners’ affirmation “so the public realizes that the board is behind us on the equipment that we use” in the local elections.

Renner said hand count supporters “got very rough and not-so-nice” with commissioners in the past and that a motion would “cover what the public might come at you with” this election cycle.

Thiel later said he had no problem backing the clerk’s office and made the motion to accept the electronic tabulators for the primary and general elections. He said that would make clear it was the commissioners’ decision, “because ultimately, the buck stops with us.”

Commissioners didn’t get any public pushback at Tuesday’s meeting, but hand count supporters have already made their opinions known.

The Park County Republican Party overwhelmingly passed a resolution supporting hand counting last fall, then passed a couple more resolutions backing the practice at their Feb. 28 convention.

During that gathering, Larry French of Powell noted that he and others have been fighting the commissioners for a hand count for years.

“They have the legal authority by state statute and they refuse to do the biddance of the people,” French said, drawing applause.

Differing opinions on a survey 

French, state Sen. Dan Laursen, R-Powell, Tim Lasseter, Dave McMillan and Boone Tidwell sought individual meetings with each commissioner in late December to make another, private pitch for hand counting.

To support their case, the group touted an informal survey they conducted around the county, in which 87% of 798 respondents indicated they preferred hand counting.

However, the question the group posed — “Would you prefer expert-trained election officials to hand count all ballots in Park County, or would you prefer to use a machine?” — was seen by some commissioners as a loaded question.

After a couple commissioners suggested a professional survey would be more persuasive, someone within the hand count group asked the Park County Republican Party to give the county $7,500 to conduct a survey. But members of the party’s central committee overwhelmingly rejected that idea at a January meeting. Beyond it being a substantial expenditure from the party’s coffers, there were doubts that the survey would change the commission’s mind.

“We can better utilize our money to maybe get better county commissioners,” said precinct committeeman and Powell City Councilman Troy Bray. He called the current commissioners “the biggest obstacle to getting good elections in our county.”

Lasseter — who’s since announced a campaign for the commission — also opposed using party money on a county survey.

“If they [commissioners] can pay $750,000 for a road to a shooting complex and they can pay for a land use plan that the people I talk to in my circle do not want, then they should be able to find money to pay for this,” Lasseter said. (The $750,000 that the county committed to build a road to the Wyoming State Shooting Complex south of Cody was an in-kind contribution, consisting of labor and materials.)

Some of the backstory

Local GOP leaders and commissioners have been at odds for some time, particularly in the wake of an early 2025 spat over the appointment of a new county assessor.

The party picked three nominees to replace retiring Assessor Pat Meyer, but commissioners declined to appoint any of those individuals after learning the party had miscounted three of the 84 ballots cast during the initial round of voting on the candidates. The commissioners turned the process over to a judge, who picked Meyer’s top deputy, Terry Call, who had not been among the party’s top three choices.

Current Party Chair Vince Vanata, Vice Chair Bob Ferguson, Bray and others in the party criticized the commissioners for their handling of the appointment, arguing that, regardless of whether the party miscounted their ballots, the board had to choose between their nominees.

The incident apparently came back up when the hand count group met with the commissioners last year. At the January GOP meeting, Lasseter said one commissioner stated that if the party “can’t count a simple assessor’s race in our little building here, why would they trust us to hand count ballots.” Lasseter called the remark “very telling.”

Later in the meeting, precinct committeewoman and Commissioner Dossie Overfield reiterated the attorney general’s advice that the county must use the machines. But Overfield said she believed a hand-counted audit would be “a great step in the right direction.”

Partial hand count on the way

During their winter Budget Session, lawmakers overwhelmingly passed Senate File 113, which requires approximately 5% of the total ballots cast on Election Day in the 2026 primary and general elections to be audited by hand. (In the November 2024 general election, that would have been about 400 ballots in Park County.)

The audit will be conducted by the county clerk’s office with the help of a new audit board or boards, made up of at least three voters picked by the clerk; no more than two of the board members can be from the same political party.

All the ballots from one or more electronic tabulators will be examined so the hand tally can be compared to the machine’s for “any inconsistencies or errors.”

The legislation does not require a review of all the results on the ballot. Rather, it says the board must review the results for each legislative race, any other races chosen by the county’s canvassing board and at least one federal and one statewide race selected by the secretary of state. Renner said county clerks from around the state are meeting this week to discuss the new audit process and ensure it’s conducted uniformly. 

The hand count audit is on top of another mandatory audit, in which clerks are required to review the tabulator-scanned images of up to 5% of the ballots cast to ensure voters’ markings on the ballot match the votes logged by the machines.

During the Budget Session, Park County’s legislative delegation supported the new hand count audit in SF 113, though Rep. Paul Hoeft, R-Powell, voted no.

Hoeft explained in a Wednesday interview that he didn’t like that the bill only applies to the 2026 elections.

“My thought has always been that hand counting should be available anytime there’s a question,” he said.

Hoeft had joined with the rest of the county’s delegation — Reps. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, and Nina Webber, R-Cody and Sens. Tim French, R-Heart Mountain, and Laursen — in supporting legislation that would have ditched machine tabulators in favor of entirely hand-counted elections.