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Sen. Biteman sponsors two election integrity bills during 2022 Legislative Session
Senator Bo Biteman (R-SD21) has announced that he has filed two bills addressing election integrity in the Wyoming Senate. The first bill SF-97 “Change in Party Affiliation,” deals with primary election integrity by prohibiting the practice of crossover voting.
Crossover voting involves members of one political party changing their party affiliation (often on the same day of the election) to vote in the competing party’s primary election, then immediately switching back to their original party affiliation.
“This practice has been going on for far too long in our state,” Biteman said. “It is not fair, it is not right, and it is harming the integrity of our party nomination process. This bill will go a long way toward ending this up to now legal, but unethical behavior, and restore confidence in our party nominating process. Party switching cancels out the vote of actual party members by those who wish to game the system and influence the outcome of their competing party’s nominating election.”
Under Biteman’s proposal, voters will be able to change their party affiliation at any time except in the time frame between the candidate filing period which currently takes place in May, until the primary election held in August.
The Senator also filed SF-96 “Collection of Election Ballots-Prohibition” which would prohibit what is commonly known as “Ballot Harvesting.” The proposal would make it illegal for people or groups to solicit, gather or submit absentee ballots without written authorization from the person who requested the absentee ballot.
“This is one common sense step we can take in Wyoming to ensure that our absentee voting process cannot be used to commit voter fraud,” Biteman said. “In Wyoming, we pride ourselves on making it easy to vote through a lengthy early voting and absentee period, this just makes it harder to cheat.”
michael Mclaughlin
February 16, 2022 at 3:35 pm
First step in an honest form of voting….. Thank You Bo!
Harriett Oleson
February 16, 2022 at 3:45 pm
Watcha ya Afeered of Bo??? What’s wrong with folks a votin tha way they want to???? But that does seem to be a fear of the Pubs since tha last election. They’s put in a lot of rules to stop a votin yer koncsnse, all over this great contry. Could they be afeered that a lot of folks jest don’t gree with their vision of a one party democracy???
Clark Guelde
February 16, 2022 at 6:35 pm
If folks can show up in person to “peacefully protest” they should be capable of showing up to vote.
Thomas Jones
February 17, 2022 at 8:29 am
Those rules affect EVERYONE equally, harriet. What are YOU afraid of?
Chip King
February 16, 2022 at 6:56 pm
Yes, let’s detract from our budget with a waste of time again. This is a budget session stay focused on the task at hand.
Charles Cole
February 16, 2022 at 10:00 pm
Good for you, Senator Biteman. Now, get ready for a ton of slime to be thrown your way (which, I see, has already begun on this board). Just remember the old WWII Army Air Corps saying, “The flak is always heaviest directly over the target.” And you are most assuredly right over a major target. They’ll defend this “vote by mail” scam to the bitter end. Interesting because although the left constantly praises everything done by the Europeans, I’d like for one of them to name one (just ONE) of those countries where routine vote-by-mail elections are held. They learned years ago that this is the area of elections most vulnerable to fraud. Good for you, senator. Hold your ground!
Thomas Jones
February 17, 2022 at 8:26 am
A good start Bo, but WY needs to ditch the ES&S voting tabulator machines, or at least validate (audit) the tabulator count like CO and NM do. ES&S ignored a subpoena from the state of WI regarding a recount, and VP Harris warned the US about these tabulators several years ago. ES&S needs to go!
Janet Winfrey
February 17, 2022 at 9:47 am
I would also like to include a residency time. You should have to have lived in the state at least 9 months or more before you can vote in an election. Kudos to Bo for starting to ensure that cross-over voting is limited, and the primary vote begins to reflect the true party vote. The primary is for party voting, the general is for voting your choice of any candidate that is on the ballot.
Diane C Gray
February 17, 2022 at 4:30 pm
Dear Senator Biteman,
Thank you for sponsoring these two election integrity bills. May God Bless you with success.
Clark Lugooby
February 18, 2022 at 2:49 am
Why don’t they just get it over and write the law they really want : Only white republican landowners can vote
Mark Steingass
February 18, 2022 at 2:01 pm
this isn’t about voter fraud…because Wyoming doesn’t have a voter fraud problem…this is about preventing crossover party affiliation…preventing people from changing their party to vote for Liz Cheney
Clark Guelde
February 21, 2022 at 5:45 am
Why would Democrats want to vote in the Republican primary? Could it be because they are now unelectable in rural and suburban America? Going forward wouldn’t it make more sense to reflect inward and try to understand why that’s the case and then come up with a plan of action to fix the problem?