October 31, 2025
Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee
State of Wyoming Legislature
Capitol Extension, W006
200 West 24th Street
Cheyenne, WY
Dear Chairman Case, Chairman Knapp, and Committee Members,
On behalf of Verified Voting, I submit these comments on 26LSO-0043 concerning random hand count audits of election results. Verified Voting is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen democracy for all voters by promoting the responsible use of technology in elections. Since its founding by computer scientists in 2004, Verified Voting has promoted voter-verified paper ballots and routine, rigorous post-election audits to check the accuracy of computerized voting systems. We support this measure to strengthen the statutory requirement for routine post-election audits in Wyoming and increase public confidence in election outcomes.
This bill would require a hand count (manual) audit in every county, after every primary and general election, of all ballots in at least one randomly selected precinct. This is an improvement to the current practice of comparing ballot images to cast vote records as a form of auditing. According to the widely endorsed Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Tabulation Audits, “Audits require human examination of voter-marked paper ballots — the ground truth of the election…. Audits cannot rely on scanned images or machine interpretations of the ballots to
accurately reflect voter intent.”[1]
When implemented alongside other best practices, post-election audits of paper ballots provide solid evidence for the initial election outcome when it is correct—and an opportunity to correct the outcome when it is not. In addition to confirming outcomes and detecting errors (whether accidental or intentional), good tabulation audits can deter fraud and help foster continuous improvement in election administration.
We urge the Committee to advance this measure in support of more secure and verifiable elections.
Sincerely,
C.Jay Coles
Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs
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1 Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Tabulation Audits, page 7 https://verifiedvoting.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Principles-and-Best-Practices-For-Post-Election-Tabulation-Audits.pdf.