by Maggie Mullen, WyoFile
CHEYENNE—Only a fraction of the wide-ranging, election-related bills filed in Wyoming’s 2025 legislative session have made it to the governor’s desk, effectively lowering the possibility that the state’s elections will look dramatically different for voters casting ballots in 2026.
Altogether, lawmakers filed 45 election bills this year — accounting for about 8% of all proposed legislation. Most were sponsored by Wyoming Freedom Caucus members and allies, who said voters gave them a loud and clear mandate via the very system they now seek to reform.
Eight of those bills made it through the legislative process to the governor’s desk. The first and only one to get his signature so far prohibits the distribution of unsolicited absentee ballot request forms.
Tuesday, the governor vetoed a bill that would have put a minimum threshold on ballots cast in certain bond elections for the proposal to be approved. Gordon cited concerns over constitutionality and ultimately, the House sided with his veto Wednesday when it voted against overriding his decision.
The rest of the bills Gordon has yet to decide on involve voter registration, banning certain kinds of funding for campaigns and elections, prohibiting ranked choice voting and moving up deadlines for forming a new political party.
Meanwhile, some of the session’s more sweeping measures came up short, including several that died when both the Senate and the House adjourned Friday before hearing 11 election bills. Those included bills to ban drop boxes and ballot harvesting, revise acceptable forms of voter ID and implement a runoff election for Wyoming’s top five elected offices. Legislation also died from Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, that combined several of the measures up for consideration this year into one bill.
Finger pointing
Eight bills that died Friday in the Senate were sponsored by Freedom Caucus members and allies and several overlapped with Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s legislative priorities. While Gray applauded the passage of several election bills in the House throughout the session, he told WyoFile he’s disappointed with the work of their colleagues in the upper chamber.
“The weakness of Senate leadership on election integrity, including Senator Biteman, Senator Nethercott, and Senator Salazar has been disappointing,” Gray wrote in an email.
Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, also expressed frustration.
“It’s not surprising that some of the caucus’s priority bills were killed — we’re used to that, as it’s part of the legislative process. What was disappointing was the Senate’s decision to adjourn after only working nine House bills,” Bear told WyoFile in a text message.
Bear also criticized Nethercott in her capacity as senate majority floor leader. In that position, it’s Nethercott’s responsibility to decide the order in which bills are heard in the Senate and when to prompt the chamber to adjourn for the day.
Nethercott, a Cheyenne Republican, initially declined to comment when approached Monday by WyoFile at the Capitol. In a press conference later that day, she told reporters the fate of those bills is partly timing.
“Unfortunately, many of those bills were high-numbered and had just gotten through the committee,” Nethercott said.
The Senate Corporations Committee had been saddled with the highest volume of bills, Nethercott said, so some of that legislation only made it to the Senate late last week.
“So there wasn’t even a 24-hour period for the public to see what was on general file before they were placed onto committee of the whole,” Nethercott said, describing what functions as the full chamber’s first discussion of a bill.
“So I think in that reality, it’s important to put that time frame or perspective in place,” she said.
Biteman stood by Nethercott, and said appeasing the lower chamber was an impossible task.
“It wouldn’t matter if she would have gotten all but one out, they still would have criticized her. That seems to be their [modus operandi],” Biteman said.
“We have accomplished — we, as in the House and the Senate, the Legislature collectively has accomplished so much this session, but all you’re hearing about is the negative,” Biteman added.
The Senate also backed its majority floor leader Tuesday when it rejected a motion from Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Torrington, to resurrect a failed election bill related to runoff elections.
Arguably the most extensive election bill to fail Friday, House Bill 249, “Runoff elections,” would have moved August’s primary to May for Wyoming’s top five elected offices and its federal delegation. If the winner received less than 51% of the vote, the top two contenders would run again in August.
Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said he brought the bill to eliminate the chance that Wyoming’s next governor would take office with less than 51% of the vote in the primary.
“I’ve already heard where there could be potentially eight candidates in this upcoming race, and that field consistently seems to grow,” he told the House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee earlier this session.
Both Neiman and Steinmetz are among names being floated as potential gubernatorial candidates.
When Steinmetz brought the motion to revive the bill in the Senate, she told lawmakers “it rises to the level of discussion for the body” and she compared its urgency to the Senate’s efforts that day to suspend the rules to get a new shooting complex bill through three readings after the upper chamber tanked the supplemental budget bill.
Sen. Charles Scott, R-Casper, urged lawmakers against the motion and gave credit to Nethercott.
“I think the process has worked very smoothly this session,” Scott said. “I think it’s a mistake to start going and picking bills out that were not quite as ready as some of the others. I suppose we could be here till midnight and do that, Mr. President, but I think the best time to stop this is right now.”
The Senate voted 26-5 against the motion.
Other dead bills
House Bill 131, “Ballot drop boxes-prohibition,” and House Bill 238, “Ballot harvesting prohibition,” also died Friday in the Senate. The former would have banned ballot drop boxes, while the latter sought to prohibit “ballot harvesting,” or the gathering of ballots for the purpose of delivery.
Seven counties provided a ballot drop box in 2024 and have said they are a secure and convenient option for voters, particularly those who are rural residents and shift workers.
It’s also not uncommon for homebound voters in Wyoming to rely on friends and family to deliver their absentee ballots to the clerk, and HB 238 did include exceptions for immediate family and residential care facility employees.
Both practices have been used in Wyoming for decades, long before they took on controversy during the 2020 election, thanks in large part to the debunked film “2,000 Mules.”
The film’s distributor has since apologized and pulled it from its platform, and Dinesh D’Souza, the film’s director, also apologized and admitted that part of the film’s analysis was “on the basis of inaccurate information.”
The House passed both bills with two-thirds support before meeting their end in the Senate.
Several types of identification are currently acceptable for voting purposes under Wyoming law, including Medicaid and Medicare insurance cards.
House Bill 206, “Acceptable identification revisions-2,” would have repealed the specific use of those cards and restricted the law to only identification cards that include the voter’s photograph. And House Bill 160, “Voter identification-revisions,” would have repealed student identification cards that are currently acceptable.
Both bills passed in the House, but died when they did not meet critical deadlines in the second chamber. Gray prioritized the two bills, along with the two ballot-related bills.
“Our administration will never stop working to achieve common-sense, conservative election integrity in the state of Wyoming,” Gray wrote WyoFile.
“That’s why we submitted an interim topic to the Joint Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Committee to hear all these bills that did not quite make it to the finish line,” he wrote.
Ultimately, interim topics are up to the Legislature’s Management Council to decide.
Proof of residency and citizenship
Of the bills currently sitting on Gordon’s desk, House Bill 156, “Proof of voter residency-registration qualifications,” poses the most significant change for Wyoming voters.
Under current regulations, residents are required to provide proof of identity when registering to vote in Wyoming. House Bill 156 would add proof of residency and citizenship to that process. It would also require residents to live in Wyoming for at least 30 days before casting a ballot.
Opponents of the bill have said it risks disenfranchising eligible voters, such as unhoused residents, tribal members and women staying at shelters to flee violence.
Gray, however, called it “a landmark election integrity bill,” and said it would make Wyoming the one state to require proof of citizenship to vote.
Last year, Gray proposed via an executive rulemaking process — separate from the legislative process — requiring proof of residency during voter registration. Gordon, however, rejected the rules, citing a recommendation of the Legislative Service Office and Management Council.
“Unless and until the Legislature grants the Secretary of State more explicit authority allowing for rulemaking to add to those statutory requirements at the time of registration, I believe these rules are a breach of separation of powers with the legislative branch,” Gordon wrote in a letter outlining his decision.
House Bill 156 would grant Gray the authority to promulgate rules for what documentation would constitute proof of residency. The bill was Gray’s top legislative priority.
Other bills on gov’s desk
Three of the other election bills up for Gordon’s consideration deal with various prohibitions.
“House Bill 337, Prohibition foreign funding of ballot measure,” would put restrictions on non-citizens’ spending in Wyoming elections, while House Bill 165, “Ranked choice voting-prohibition,” would rule out the possibility for any election in Wyoming to be conducted via a system where voters rank candidates by their preferences.
House Bill 228, “Prohibition on private funds for conducting elections,” would ban state or local government agencies from accepting private dollars to conduct elections.
Gray has said such a prohibition is needed to prevent “Zuck bucks,” in reference to billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s election-related charity in 2020. None of those funds ended up in Wyoming, according to Capital Research Center, a conservative think-tank.
The Legislature adjourned Thursday.
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
