Statewide election results certified

Crook County didn’t vote in favor of the constitutional amendment that will see a new “residential property” class created for tax assessments.

The rest of the state disagreed.

Crook was among only four counties that disagreed with the measure, with a final vote count of 1925 for and 1997 against.

Goshen, Niobrara and Platte made up the other “no” votes.

The amendment still received a majority of the total ballots cast, with 146,336 votes for and 100,392 votes against.

The total number of ballots cast was 271,123, so the majority needed was 135,562. The amendment topped this by just over 10,000 “yes” votes.

At this time, there is no specific measure planned to make use of the new class. However, the amendment both adds a fourth class and gives the legislature authority to create the subclass of “owner occupied primary residences”.

Overall, the amendment could allow for a different property tax rate for houses as compared to mineral or industrial properties. A primary home could also be charged at a different rate to a vacation home.

The constitutional amendment was among the results made official last week when the Wyoming State Canvassing Board met in Cheyenne to canvass the statewide results of the general election.

During that meeting, Director of the Elections Division CJ Young provided a number of statistics about voter turnout in Wyoming.

Notably, 45% of registered voters had already returned their absentee ballots by the time that polls opened on election day.

For this election, Wyoming residents requested a total of 118,959 absentee ballots, of which 97% were returned.

The overall turnout of 271,123 represents 59.7% of the population of Wyoming of voting age.

No mandatory recounts were triggered for statewide races, although one was requested for House District 13 in Laramie that did not change the results of the race.

Young also confirmed that Wyoming’s choices for national seats were Donald Trump for United States President, John Barrasso for United States Senate, Harriet Hageman for United States Representative.

Thirty judicial retention elections were also verified, including two Wyoming Supreme Court Justices, 14 judges for Wyoming District Court and 14 for Wyoming Circuit Court. All were retained.

There were no successful write-in campaigns for state or federal office.

There was only one report of a significant election-day problem. The distribution of incorrect ballots appeared to cause issues with the House District 1 race in Weston County, for which Chip Neiman ran unopposed.

The county canvassing board was asked to perform a hand examination prior to certification of the official results. The issue was resolved.