If greater efficiency’s the goal, why are state lawmakers still obsessing over our elections?

Putting aside for a moment whatever you may think of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), it’s difficult to argue with the premise behind it.

Setting out to make our government more efficient, more accountable and more user-friendly should have been the goal of every administration dating back to the founding of our nation.

But sadly, it hasn’t been. So DOGE is in a position of playing catch-up, trying to slow down what it perceives to be a runaway train of government inefficiency.

Time will tell how its haphazard, chainsaw approach impacts the lives of everyday Wyomingites. Between the cuts to federal programming authored by DOGE and local belt-tightening that will required due to the legislature’s refusal to backfill property-tax cuts, there’s reason to fear a significant decrease in services.

But that’s a topic for another day

For today, let’s focus on this idea of making our government more efficient. And instead of focusing on Washington, D.C., let’s look a little closer to home, at our state leaders and lawmakers in Cheyenne.

Let’s talk about the complete waste of time, money and energy that this “election reform” movement has become in our state, really since the 2020 elections.  

This isn’t about other states and whether reform is needed in those places. This is about Wyoming.  Our Wyoming. The nation’s least populated state. And still a place where in most of our small towns, you know the polling place workers by their first names — and maybe their kids and their business, too!

So are regular Wyoming folk really losing sleep over the integrity of our elections? 

Last November, when you walked into the Greybull or Shell or Emblem precinct, were you really concerned that your vote would not be counted?  

Or that the vote in our most populated cities — the Caspers, the Cheyennes, and so on — would be compromised in some way to the point of changing an outcome?

As a Wyoming resident for parts of four residents who has never missed a vote, I’ve never had these thoughts. To the contrary, what has crossed my mind is that all these additional layers of “security” placed on our election workers is making it harder for them to do their jobs and for us to actually participate in the process. 

The fact that there are lawmakers — including one of our own, Sen. Dan Laursen — advocating for hand-counts of ballots in our state is lunacy. What is the far-right wing of the Republican party afraid of? That a Democrat will get 15% of the vote in a statewide race?  

Perhaps there is a groundswell of support for all this election reform that I’m missing. That people are losing sleep over it. Our secretary of state and some legislative leaders are sure convinced it exists.

Forty-five election-related bills were filed during the recent general session, making up 8% of all bills.  Hardly any reached the governor’s desk.  Think of all the time and energy that went into them.

It doesn’t appear to be changing, either. Recent reporting suggests our state lawmakers aren’t going to spend as much time in meetings during the interim, but that studying the state’s election processes is going to be the top priority of the Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee.  Not affordable housing, which matters a whole lot more in communities like ours. Election processes. 

There have been only four reported cases of election fraud in Wyoming since 2000 and polls show nearly nine in 10 state residents believe their county’s tally of presidential votes to be somewhat or very reliable.

So why all the fuss over a problem that doesn’t exist? Who is making election integrity the top priority of our state and why?  Why are we still talking about election reform?  

If greater efficiency is the goal, there’s a lengthy list of more pressing issues that should be consuming the time of our lawmakers. Our elections in Wyoming are safe and secure. Always have been. Let’s move on.