According to the office of the County Clerk of Albany County there are no cases of voter fraud in Wyoming even with the polling changes this year.
“What we see on the news doesn’t really happen in Wyoming. We keep a pretty clean record of when people are deceased or registered as felons. We’re active and up to date on who shouldn’t be voting and we keep pretty good checks and balances,” said Stacey Harvey, the election clerk for Albany County.
Harvey’s job involves working with voter registration, early voting at the county clerk office, and processing votes of election day.
“The biggest danger probably in voter fraud is not even fraud but errors of ballots not being marked correctly and then they have to be deciphered at the county clerk,” said Dr. Jim King, a professor of political science at UW, who teaches Introduction to American and Wyoming Government, American Government and Policies, and Policies and Election Law.
Dr. King said with absentee ballots there are multiple people involved with each ballot. Signatures are checked on envelopes before they are opened. Then they are sent to be scanned afterwards. Votes are double checked,” said Dr. King.
“With the new election equipment we have that’s used across the state of Wyoming, ballots are passed through a DS400 ballot counter for absentee. In person is the DS200. You place ballots in ballot counters at polls, and they’re brought to ballot counting locations,” said Jackie Gonzales, the Albany County Clerk and chief election officer.
According to Gonzales there were twice as much absentee ballots this year than the last election year. This is why the DS400, which counts ballots faster than the DS200 model, was used for the absentee mail in ballots and the early voting absentee ballots.
The county clerk office also had to make preparations to set up polling locations for COVID safe practices.
“The secretary of state said that we had to consolidate polling places. Previously we had 14 polling places [in Albany County] and this year we only had six polling places besides absentee and here at the courthouse in the whole county,” said Harvey.
Despite having fewer polling locations the county clerk’s office maintained social distancing with signs, provided masks for people who wanted one, and hand sanitizer throughout polling locations. The individual areas where ballots are casted were sanitized after every use.
While polling locations were limited, the secretary of state allowed absentee voting to start early this year.
In general, the county clerk office is responsible for issuing certificates such as marriage certificates and certificates for real estate transactions along with planning for election years.
The county clerk office begins planning for elections one year in advance of elections. They also host registration drives and are the location where candidates file to officially run for office.
“Basically I have a great team of somewhere to 140 election judges that work together to do what is statutorily necessary in an election,” said Gonzales. “I have a transparency policy available so anyone can talk to me and ask questions.”
Gonzales said that anyone can be an election judge. Election judges are put into broad groups of about 20 people such as the absentee ballot board or the test board.
