Gearing up for election day

Signs of the primary election are everywhere, with less than a week to go. But if you’ve been watching carefully, you may have spotted indications since almost the beginning of the year.

“There’s a lot going on behind the scenes, all the way back to February in election year,” says Melissa Jones, Crook County Clerk.

Early Days

Filing for an initiative petition must be done in February, for example. April sees the start of the process of finding election judges, while the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) certifies the offices that are up for election this year.

“We also start asking the towns, school board and special districts to certify what positions they’re going to have on the ballot,” Jones says. “By May, we need to know what positions are going to be open for the primary and for as much of the general as we can.”

A notice is also sent to all the special districts for the primary proclamation, even though those seats are not elected until the general, “so that people can start planning out their election year.”

In May, notice must be sent out for any bond elections and candidate filing opens for the primary.

“Starting this year, the first day of candidate filing was also the last day that you could change your political party,” Jones says.

Election districts and precincts must be set, and notice sent out if the boundaries of a district are changing. This doesn’t happen often, Jones says, and usually only in a redistricting year; but if it does, notice is sent out to any voters whose polling location will be changing.

Town elections also happen in May.

“Cities have the option to hold their own elections, if they want. For Crook County, Hulett is the only one that does that,” she says.

There are pros and cons, in Jones’ opinion: a solo election means that it’s done and dusted early, but also that the town must do the work of running the election.

The primary proclamation is then published, also in May. June is the deadline to register a new political party with the SOS. This year saw just one: the “No Labels” party.

“There are no candidates running for that so we don’t have a No Labels ballot, but we’ve had cases in the past where we’ve had to have a Constitutional ballot and a Libertarian ballot,” Jones says.

By June, the cities and SOS must certify the candidates to the county clerk, which confirms that each candidate meets criteria such as being a registered voter and correct place of residence.

To make this easier, this year Jones provided the towns with a list of their registered voters to make it easier to identify qualified candidates.

By the end of the month, election judges must be appointed.

“That’s sometimes a process, because things inevitably happen,” she says. Illness, emergencies, life changes – a lot can happen between volunteering in April and the August election.

By statute, three election judges are required at a polling location to ensure there are enough people to perform each individual task, which in turn creates a system of checks and balances. For instance, two poll books are created and one is kept for two years by an election judge in case the need arises to check the accuracy of the one kept in the clerk’s office.

More judges are often necessary, which means there’s a total of 71 judges in Crook County this year.

“For a place like Sundance, we have three district precincts down there [in the courthouse basement], so if we just had three judges, they couldn’t handle it,” she says.

“Those people are volunteering their time and they’re there for a long day, so we want to make sure they’re not over-stressed.”

In July, Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act ballots must be sent out and absentee voting begins. Ballots need to be ready and in the office so that copies can be posted.

Public Test

The public test for the voting equipment also takes place in July, starting with a check that all the ballots run through the machine properly. A “test deck” is then created, which must meet its own set of criteria.

“You have to make sure that you have at least one vote for every candidate so you know every oval counts. You have to make sure that the ballot will take an over-voted ballot,” she says.

When someone votes for four candidates for a position when they were able to vote for three, for example, the machine will offer the option to return the ballot. The voter can accept this option, but can also decide to have their ballot counted as it stands.

“You have to make sure the machine will ask them, but will take it anyway,” she says.

One ballot is left blank, while every oval is filled in on another. The number of votes cannot be even for every candidate.

The test deck is then hand-counted by two different people and run through the machine to make sure the two match, and that both match the printout from the computer.

It’s usually the hand count that doesn’t match, she says – “We haven’t had any issues with the machine.”

The test deck is then sealed and stored so that it can be run again as a post-election audit. This, says Jones, ensures no tampering has taken place and it is still functioning properly.

After the public test, the machines are all set to zero and sealed up. Since 2022, machines have been sealed in the same way in each county, says Jones, because the clerks decided to push for uniformity.

This physical security protects the machines from any tampering. If an election judge finds that a seal has been removed before election day, the machine must be recertified before use.

Seals are placed over every part of the machine that could conceivably be tampered with. There’s one over the slot for the USB stick used to transfer the results and another on the door over its compartment, for example; and one over the emergency ballot bin.

A seal is placed over the compartment where a modem can be placed, Jones says, though none of Wyoming’s machines have one installed. Modems are an option for counties with remote locations to allow results to be sent to the clerk on election night, but Wyoming does not use this option.

About the only situation for which internet connectivity is needed in Wyoming is in counties with a vote center, Jones says, which doesn’t include Crook. This allows the election judges to share information in an e-poll book to guard against a voter using the central location and then voting a second time in their own precinct.

No seal is placed on the ballot bin itself so that the election judges can check it is empty at the beginning of the day. The bin is then sealed by the judges before voting begins.

The seals themselves are similar to evidence tape: if peeled off, they will read “void”.

“We don’t do anything with those machines again until the judges open them on election day,” she says.

Some seals remain even through election day – for these, red tape is used. If a seal must be removed by the end of the day, yellow tape, while green denotes seals that are verified and broken as voting begins.

While all this is going on, and on election day, “chain of custody” logs are kept to record the position and access of important items such as ballots, voting machines, memory sticks and the tabulation computer.

Answering Concerns

Sometimes, despite all these steps, there’s still a hiccup or two. This year, for example, the Wyoming Republican Party called into question whether some counties performed the test correctly.

Secretary of State Chuck Gray said he had received “numerous concerns” that candidates had not been assigned a different number of valid votes during the tests.

Gray sent an email to six counties asking for records that would show this was not the case, or a retest of the equipment. The problem with this request, says Jones, is that everything is now sealed.

“Once the public test is done, as long as everything matched, the statute says you’re supposed to put it in a box and seal it,” she says.

This includes everything from machine tapes to hand tally results to machine totals to the sign-in sheet.

Jones then received a public records request for an item that was in the sealed box.

The advice of County Attorney Joe Baron was that “sealed means sealed”, Jones says – the items in that box are not public record during the period they are sealed.

“There’s a good reason for it: we want those same exact results to happen after the election so that we know the machines were functioning before and after,” she says.

While some counties complied with the request to retest and she respects that each county must do what they feel is best, Jones says she was advised not to do so because, like the items in the sealed box, the machines themselves have now been certified and sealed until election day.

According to statute, once the test is complete and the machines have been sealed, they must be assumed to be in perfect working order unless a complaint is filed in District Court within two days. This, says Jones, did not happen.

Baron’s advice, she says, was that that statute is warning to “leave it alone, leave it sealed.”

With everything sealed, Jones cannot prove each candidate was assigned a different number of votes. A printout currently inside the box will provide the necessary information once the election is complete and, again on the advice of Baron, Jones has a plan to make doubly sure everything is above board.

“At the post audit, we’ll do what we’re supposed to do: test the machines with the same exact ballots to make sure they’re still functioning. If there are candidates that don’t have a different number of votes, we’ll address it then,” she says.

This will be done by making alterations to the ballots to ensure no tallies match and re-running the test.

Final Days

Final steps are still needed as the primary draws near: election judges must be trained, poll and registry lists need to be created, any proposed constitutional amendments must be published, filing opens for candidates from minor parties and campaign finance reports must be collected. The latter can now be viewed at http://www.wycampaignfinance.gov.

All of this is taking place at the same time as candidate filing opens for the general election, budgets are being finalized, fixed assets are being done and the fiscal year needs to be closed out.

It’s a busy time of year for a clerk’s office. Countless moving parts must come together before the polls open on August 20, so that the only role a voter need play is to mark the candidates of their choice.