NEWS
Sheridan County will conduct a hand-count audit of 505 Election Day ballots on Saturday, Aug. 29, as part of a new election-verification procedure mandated by Senate File 113.
SF0113, enacted during the 2026 Wyoming legislative session, requires every county clerk to conduct a physical hand count following both the 2026 primary and general elections. The hand tally will then be compared with the results produced by the county’s electronic tabulating equipment.
During Monday’s Sheridan County Commission meeting, Commissioner Mike Arzy suggested the precinct to be audited should be chosen at random. A random selection would prevent county officials from deliberately choosing a particular precinct and would give the public greater confidence that the sample was not selected to produce a predetermined result.
The selection, however, will not be made by the county commissioners; by statute it is left to the county canvassing board. Acting Sheridan County Clerk Kim Hein told The Open Range Record that the county canvassing board will choose the precinct whose ballots will be audited. The board is made up of Republican Tod Windsor, Democrat Rob Anderson and Hein. Hein said the county has determined that 505 ballots will be hand counted to meet the law’s approximately 5% requirement.
The law itself does not specifically require a random selection. Instead, it directs the county canvassing board to select enough ballots to constitute 5% of the total ballots cast in the election. That distinction makes the selection process important. Arzy’s suggestion would add a layer of transparency to a decision that SF0113 otherwise leaves to the canvassing board.
The audit must cover one federal race and one statewide race selected by the Wyoming Secretary of State, as well as every legislative race printed on the selected ballots. The canvassing board may also choose to audit additional races.
Under the law, each audit board must contain at least three qualified electors, with no more than two members from the same political party. The counters are required to record each vote, undervote, and overvote according to the instructions printed on the ballot and the standards used by the electronic equipment.
Any discrepancy between the hand count and the machine total must be reported to the Secretary of State. SF0113 requires the audit to be completed no later than nine days after the county canvass.
Audit Follows Certification Questions
Saturday’s audit takes on added importance because Sheridan County encountered several questions during the testing and certification of its tabulation equipment before the primary election.
As previously reported by The Open Range Record, the Clerk’s Office began its public Logic and Accuracy testing on July 13. Although political party officials reportedly received written notice, and a notice was posted inside the Clerk’s Office, the notice on the county website was not posted until late Saturday night. Because testing began at 8:30 a.m. Monday, the website notice did not provide the full two-day notice required by Wyoming law.
Questions also arose during the testing itself. The county’s DS-450 absentee-ballot tabulator processed a test deck containing 3,132 ballots, but the first run produced several discrepancies between the expected and reported totals. Officials initially suspected that a data stick had not been updated. The data stick was updated, and the entire test deck was processed again, but the discrepancies remained.
Schunk-Thompson later said the problem was caused by human errors made while duplicating the test ballots and announced that testing would resume July 16 after those errors were corrected. Eventually the machine certification was completed on July 17 after another full day of testing.
Clerk’s Office Transition
The audit will also take place under an acting county clerk rather than Sheridan County’s elected clerk.
Elected Sheridan County Clerk Eda Schunk-Thompson appointed Hein to assume the clerk’s duties after Schunk-Thompson fell and spent several days in the hospital. Hein was not working in the Sheridan County Clerk’s Office at the time of Schunk-Thompson’s accident. The county’s website now lists Hein as chief deputy clerk, and she oversaw the primary election in Schunk-Thompson’s absence.
Hein told The Open Range Record that the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office was not notified until Aug. 17 that Schunk-Thompson would not be overseeing the Aug. 18 primary election, though the accident occurred almost a full week prior. That notification came one day before voters went to the polls.
Saturday’s hand count will provide the first test in Sheridan County of the Legislature’s new 5% audit mandate. With Arzy calling for a random selection, attention will now fall not only on whether the hand count matches the electronic results, but also on how the canvassing board chooses the ballots that will be reviewed.