By Jasmine Hall
Jackson Hole News&Guide
Via- Wyoming News Exchange

JACKSON — After walking into a room filled with Lander and Riverton residents wearing “HANDS OFF MY VOTE” and “We trust our election machines” stickers on Thursday, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray said the state needs to move forward with legislation banning electronic voting equipment.

House Bill 215 seeks to switch Wyoming over to an entirely hand-counting system, as does Senate File 184. 

Rep. Scott Smith, R-Lingle, sponsored HB 215 during the 2025 legislative session, but the bill died early in the lawmaking process. Gray put it on a long list of bills from the past session that he would like the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee to take up this year.

The committee held its first gathering to prepare for the 2026 session on Thursday in Lander. The room was packed for the first six hours of the meeting when an election equipment demonstration was put on by clerks and the Secretary of State’s Office laid out its priorities.

Gray is also in favor of two other bills that would require random hand-count audits of election results and hand-counting for recounts. He said those bills would get the state in the “habit of hand, eyeball examination.”

“House Bill 215 is sort of the grand moving in that direction,” Gray said. “It’s a bill that we encourage the House committee to move forward. I think it’s an important conversation to have.”

Gray’s endorsement was questioned by the sole Democrat on the joint committee.

“Do you support banning the machines in total or only just the conversation?” asked Minority Floor Leader Mike Yin, D-Jackson. “I’m trying to get where your actual stance is if you had to vote on it yourself.”

The secretary of state said Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence in President Donald Trump’s cabinet, voiced her concern recently that there is potential for hacking the electronic ballot-counting machines. Gray said he shares this concern and that he expects a report soon.

“It’s really important that we continue to have this before us for consideration,” he said about the ban on electronic equipment. “Because we don’t know what that report is going to say yet.”

Yin said he would take the response as a “non answer” and followed up with another question, but not without rebuttal from Gray.

“Certainly note the gotcha sort of tone here,” Gray said. “I want to correct something from the previous comments after my questions and mischaracterization. It was an answer, which is that we need to continue to examine these issues.

“We can’t just pooh-pooh reports from the Trump administration on the potential for hacking.”

Gray said he hoped that Yin would keep an open mind.

“We really need to be vigorous on this, not make this partisan,” he said.

While Gray said the ban was among the nearly two-dozen bills he supported from the past session, the committee decided to take up 10 for now that did not include House Bill 215.