Natrona County clerk says 2024 election saw fewer voters than 2020

CASPER, Wyo. — On Tuesday, during the Natrona County Commissioners’ work session, Natrona County Clerk Tracy Good revealed the results of the 2024 election, which took place in November.

Speaking to the county commissioners, Good shared various statistics regarding Wyoming voter turnout.

“There were 34,206 ballots cast in the general election,” Good stated. “That’s 1,100 less than the 2020 presidential election. So, we didn’t hit a record there.”

Good also shared how many of the votes came through the County Clerk’s office, and how many came via mail-in ballots.

“That included a total of 8,925 voters that came through the office, and 4,404 mail ballots,” Good stated. “We had 7,071 new registrants and/or changes that we had to process through my office. We also had over 200 election judges, with 25 polling locations.”

Good said that numerous employees of Natrona County volunteered to assist with the election process.

“The county departments that were involved and were an integral part of this election process were the IT department, county maintenance — road, bridge, fair, etc. That’s a total of about 20 employees, just in those departments alone, that helped with the election process.”

Good also stated that, due to an extremely close contest for the Casper College Board of Trustees, a recount had to be performed.

“We had to recount 34,206 ballots,” Good shared. “It was a countywide recount and took about 18 employees, including Clerk of District Court staff and HR staff. They were kind as to donate their time to the effort. It took us about eight hours to do that.”

Good later shared why the recount had to happen.

“If there’s less than 1% between the lowest winner and the highest loser, then there’s a statutory recount,” she said. “That happened in the college board race.”

In that race, Kim Byrd won 19.19% of the total votes, or 14,069 votes, and Jay Swedberg won 18.39% of the total votes, or 13,480.

Good stated that the deadline to get all registrations entered into the statewide voter registration system is Dec. 5.

“We have met that deadline,” she stated. “We’re done with that. We have until January 1 to close the election, and we’re on target to hit that mark, easy.”

Good said that her office will begin performing the post-election audit, which is required by Wyoming statute 22-11-109. “We’ll be getting that done,” she said. “So all in all, we’re wrapping up the election process, and getting that put to bed. It was successful, as far as I’m concerned. So I want to send a thank you to all of my fellow elected department heads; everyone that made it happen. I cannot do it without the help of everyone, so I greatly appreciate them.”

Good also shared that the county commissioners have approved bonuses for Natrona County employees. The bonuses will be sent out next week in check form.

Good then opened it up to questions. Peter Nicolaysen, commissioner chairman, asked what an election audit actually consists of.

“This particular audit is a pre-audit group of test ballots that we have to test on 5% of our automated tabulation equipment,” Good said, “so I have to go through our test deck again. Our 5% is a little over 2% of our total amount of tabulation equipment, but I usually do five machines, just as a little bit of extra, if you will. So we’ll run those ballots through again to make sure that the results come out as expected.”

Good was also asked about what could have gone better or what she would have changed with this election.

“I can’t really think [of anything], right off the cuff,” she said. “As we’re going, it’s easy to say I wish this or this or this, but I think we’re just so used to getting it done and making it happen that, whatever’s thrown at us, we just deal with it.”

Chairman Nicolaysen thanked Good and her staff for their service during the 2020 election.

“I appreciate your staff and all the elected officials and their staff helping out,” he said. “You do a superb effort on this. I think you’re a star across our state for how good of a job you do, and how good of a job we do, to the extent that — it’s reflective on the entire county. So thank you.”