Drop boxes or no drop boxes

Secretary of State Chuck Gray and the County Clerks Association of Wyoming disagree on whether drop boxes as a means for delivery of absentee ballots are safe, secure and statutorily authorized.

The County Clerks Association maintains that ballot drop boxes meet the statutory requirement for delivery to the clerk and are a method of ballot delivery that is safe, secure and statutorily authorized.

The address of the ballot drop box in Carbon County is located outside in the alley of the Carbon Building at 215 W Buffalo Street Rawlins, Wyoming.

On June 5, Secretary Gray sent a letter to Wyoming’s county clerks urging them not to use ballot drop boxes.

In response, the County Clerks Association issued a press release stating it holds to its “longstanding interpretation of W.S. §22-9-113 that the phrase ‘delivered to the clerk’ allows for the use of a ballot drop box at the discretion of an individual County Clerk.”

As stated in the clerks release: “Although not all County Clerks have utilized ballot drop boxes, it is not uncommon for the election code to allow an administrative function and leave the decision of implementation to locally elected officials like the County Clerk. Electronic poll books, election equipment, vote centers, precinct boundaries, and absentee ballot processing are a few of the administrative functions left to the discretion of locally elected officials. To be clear, we continue to believe that the use of ballot drop boxes are yet another administrative function permitted by statute and the use of that delivery method is left to the discretion of the County Clerk.

“We hold that the use of ballot drop boxes as a method of ballot delivery is safe, secure and statutorily authorized.

“Without judicial interpretation or legislative clarity,” the clerks state they continue to hold to their ‘longstanding interpretation’ of the ballot delivery statute.

Secretary Gray says he is “strongly opposed” to the use of ballot drop boxes.

“Given the differing interpretations of my predecessors’ support for drop boxes, I want to be unequivocally clear: I do not believe drop boxes represent a safe, secure, or statutory basis for absentee voting,” as stated in the secretary’s release. “For this reason, I believe they should not be used in the 2024 Election and beyond. The plain language of W.S. 22-9-113, which provides that completed absentee ballots be ‘mailed or delivered to the clerk,’ does not allow for unattended ballot drop boxes as a means of delivering absentee ballots to the clerk. The strained interpretation only came about during the government’s response to COVID-19, and the directives authorizing them are no longer in effect. As Wyoming Secretary of State, I remain committed to preserving the integrity and confidence in Wyoming’s elections. I remain convinced that the use of unstaffed and unattended ballot drop boxes is not best for our state and lacks statutory authorization, and I am strongly opposed to their use.”

In addition on June 5, the Secretary rescinded his predecessor Secretary of State Ed Buchanan’s directives allowing drop boxes. Buchanan issued the directives in 2020 in response to the governor’s declaration of a state of emergency during COVID-19.

Gray said he remains “convinced that the use of unstaffed and unattended ballot drop boxes is not best for our state and lacks statutory authorization, and I am strongly opposed to their use,” the release states. In his letter to the clerks he said delivery of an absentee ballot to an inanimate object such as an unmanned ballot drop box is not authorized by W.S. 22-9-113.