Republicans fail again to end crossover voting 

CASPER — Crossover voting has long rankled Wyoming Republicans. 

Lawmakers and party leaders have called for the end of the practice in which Democrats and independents instantly switch their party affiliation to cast a ballot in Republican primaries. National politics and the August 2022 Republican primaries supercharged their concerns as Democrats and independents changed their affiliations to back Wyoming’s former Rep. Liz Cheney. 

Those frustrations drove Wyoming lawmakers to once again attempt to eliminate crossover voting during this year’s legislative session. Those efforts have yet again failed. 

Members of the Senate Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee killed the last remaining crossover voting bill on Thursday, leaving Republican lawmakers with little recourse other than appeals to voters ahead of next year’s elections. 

“We’ve seen in the last six years – but really predominantly in the last two years – that it is a tool that is being used to manipulate the vote,” said Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, who sponsored House Bill 103, one of the bills this session that would have effectively ended crossover voting. “These individuals that are changing to a different party are picking committeemen and committeewomen that help shape the grassroot policies of the Republican Party,” he said. 

“In essence, we’ve got Democrats choosing our Republican delegation, and that’s where we have an issue.” 

Both the House and Senate considered bills that would have stopped crossover voting by restricting the time period when voters could switch their party affiliations. 

Haroldson’s bill and another one exactly like it in the House would have prevented voters from changing their party affiliation from the start of the candidate filing period all of the way up to primary. 

During the 2022 primary, candidates could start filing their applications to run on May 12, roughly three months before the primary. 

Essentially, voters would have had to choose their party ticket before they knew of the candidates who would appear on the ballot. 

Sen. Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, carried a similar bill in the Senate that was also rejected by the corporations committee this month. 

A milder version sponsored by Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, would have blocked major party voters from switching their affiliations in the last two weeks before a primary. 

Zwonitzer’s bill never made it out of the House. It marks the fifth consecutive year that Republican lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to curb crossover voting, and it comes amid heightened awareness and criticism of the practice in Wyoming. 

Secretary of State Chuck Gray has been vocal about the issue and made banning crossover voting a priority for the 2023 legislative session. Former President Donald Trump called Gov. Mark Gordon multiple times last year to push for the end of crossover voting as Cheney, one of his biggest political opponents, ran for reelection. 

Democrats and independents made a concerted effort to re-affiliate ahead of the 2022 Republican primaries to support Cheney against now Rep. Harriet Hageman, who was backed by Trump. 

It’s difficult to pin down how many voters crossed over during last year’s primaries, but Wyoming Secretary of State statistics show registered Democrats decreasing from roughly 45,000 in May 2022 to less than 31,000 in September. 

Over the same time, the ranks of independents also fell by more than 8000 voters, while Republican rolls grew by more than 38,000. 

The Republican Party’s primaries were held on Aug. 16. Democratic and independent voter registration rebounded in the last few months of 2022, suggesting some crossover, but their numbers are still well below those captured at the beginning of last year. 

The same practice of crossover voting is also available to Republicans, though in deeply red Wyoming it largely applies to Democrats and independents. 

A University of Wyoming survey ahead of the GOP primary found just 8% of likely voters identified as Democrats and 21% identified as independent. 

Whatever crossover did occur had little effect. Hageman beat Cheney by more than 30 percentage points and Republicans nominated a number of hardline conservative candidates who have gone on to strengthen the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. 

But while Republicans have pushed to end crossover voting, others have pointed to the disenfranchisement of non-Republican voters in Wyoming as the state continues to trend more conservative. 

Some of those who spoke before the corporations committee during the hearing for Haroldson’s bill argued that the state’s rightward pull left Republican primaries as the only way for independent and Democratic voters to have any voice in elections. 

“There is no benefit to the voter from this restriction. It is a form of party discipline,” said Marguerite Herman, the legislative liaison for the League of Women Voters of Wyoming. 

With lawmakers again coming up short, Haroldson said Republican voters would determine the future of crossover voting. 

“The ultimate way we fix these things is if your government doesn’t do what you want them to do, you vote them out,” he said.