As we celebrated our victories on Election Day, a few races remained undecided. High on that list was WY-AL where Gary Trauner trailed Barbara "I'd-slap-you-across-the-face" Cubin by about 1%. Throughout that first week, people braced for a recount but, when the official results were certified, Cubin had a 1,014 vote edge out of 193,369 cast, about 100 votes over the trigger for an automatic recount. Under Wyoming law, an automatic recount occurs when the difference is less that 1% of the winner's total.
Trauner, saying "it is time to put this election to rest and look to the future," conceded despite his concerns about "statistical anomalies" in Sheridan County. That may have officially been the end of the race but now, a group of Wyoming citizens is determined to check the ballots and they're going to get their chance.
Details on the flip.
Although Trauner could have requested, and paid for, a recount, he decided against that when he learned that the ballots would not be recounted by hand but simply sent back through the electronic machines. The statistical anomalies cited by Trauner stem from the fact that, throughout the state, Cubin saw her win margin decline significantly between 2004 and 2006. Everywhere, that is, except in Sheridan County. And that has led three residents of Sheridan County -- Liz Howell, Hardy Tate and Jane Vanvig, to file a public records request for the ballots which they intend to count manually on January 22.
According to Howell, the recount is not intended as an effort to remove Cubin from office, but as a way to check the performance of the county's new voting machines.
"We have to trust the system, and we can't trust the system until we've tested it, and we're willing to do that," Howell said. The three say they are simply "exercising their rights as citizens" by conducting the recount.
Howell says they sent a letter in December to County Clerk Audrey Koltiska asking for the ballots under the Wyoming public records law and, according to Howell, they have received verbal confirmation from the county that the ballots will be turned over to facilitate the recount. The three plan to have six election judges to oversee the recount to help ensure the results are as accurate and official as possible.
Howell says:
"We are really trying to verify the accuracy of this machine tabulation system rather than change the world," Howell said. "We just can’t believe the Sheridan vote came out so swayed towards Cubin because of our personal experience pounding the pavement."
Cubin won Sheridan County by 628 votes.
While Trauner is taking no active role in the recount, he supports the effort:
"If citizens want to exercise their constitutional and legal right to ensure our elections are accurate, great," Trauner said Thursday from his home. "But obviously I don't have anything to do with this."
Asked whether he would legally challenge the results if the recount shows discrepancies with the official tally, Trauner declined to speculate:
"That is not even on my mind right now," he said.
Instead, the recount is simply to highlight the problems inherent in not allowing a hand recount:
"Recounting by sticking the ballots back through the same machine doesn't make sense to me," Trauner said. "I don't know the reason behind passing the law, but to me, why have a paper trail if you can’t use it?"
While neither Howell nor Trauner have made any formal plans to seek legislation mandating a hand recount in contested races, Trauner has said that he plans to "at least touch base" with local legislators about the issue. The Wyoming Legislature is currently in session and, should the recount turn up significant differences, more action might be taken to change the law.
And now Sheridan County isn't the only place planning a citizen recount. The idea has been picked up by residents of Carbon County (Rawlins):
In Carbon County, Rawlins residents Don Cuin and Leo DeHerrera said they planned to conduct a similar recount of that county's paper ballots. Carbon County's results were the last to come in, and Trauner won the county by just 135 votes out of more than 5,400 cast.
There are also rumblings that a citizen recount may be considered in Natrona County (Casper) where Trauner won, despite it being Cubin's home county.
One additional note: While I haven't seen Longshanks post this information here, he and I talked about the Sheridan County outcome a few weeks after the election and he propounded a theory about the outcome that could explain the results. The methane gas boom in northeastern Wyoming has continued to grow exponentially the last couple of years. With housing becoming increasingly scarce in places like Gillette, more and more workers are settling in nearby Sheridan County, which may explain the more conservative tilt. And, while I found the Carbon County results upsetting, I was concerned about that area after I did my own informal survey of support on a trip across southern Wyoming in late October. I drove through a number of towns, counting signs for Cubin and Trauner, and was dismayed to see that, of all the places I visited, Rawlins and Sinclair (both Carbon County) were the only towns where Cubin had more yard signs than Trauner.
In any case, hang on because we may not have heard the last about the Trauner-Cubin race.