Election Day registrations delay turnout calculations

With more than 500 new registrations to process, it’s going to take a while for the Big Horn County Clerk’s Office to calculate the voter turnout percentage for last week’s general election.

The canvassed results show 5,788 votes being cast in the county, an increase of four compared to the official count of 5,784 votes for the last presidential election in 2020.

Clerk Lori Smallwood said her office won’t have a total registered voter count, which is needed to calculate turnout, until all the Election Day registrations have been keyed in.

“Most of the over 500 registration forms we have to process will likely be folks who re-registered because they didn’t vote in the last general election or moved,” she said.

The batch of new registrations explain how the county ended up with a greater number of votes cast (5,788) than registered voters prior to the opening of the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 5 (5,259).

The county issued 1,157 absentee ballots and 1,130 of them, or 97%, were returned by 7 p.m. on Election Day, according to Smallwood.

She reported a couple of glitches — one voting machine went down for about 10 minutes for cleaning after gel ink was used to mark a ballot, another was down for a similar time due to a jam.

“Other than that, the polls were very busy and ran as smoothly as could be expected considering the large voter turnout,” she said.

“There was some electioneering materials scattered about the ground outside the Emblem polling location,” she added. “All materials were removed prior to the polls opening.  This was reported to the county’s emergency management coordinator who reported this to Wyoming Office of Homeland Security.

“And there still seems to be some confusion among voters about polling locations and not being able to vote anywhere but your assigned poll or via absentee ballot.  

“I will be looking for some sort of educational tool/resources beyond the Secretary of State’s poll locator for the next election to try and combat that frustration among voters.”