What Is Common Sense Legislation?

By Tom Lacock

AARP Wyoming Associate State Director, State Advocacy and Communications

It appears the buzz phrase of the Legislative interim will be “common sense legislation.”

At least that is what anyone attending last week’s Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Committee meeting in Lander would think. The phrase was tossed around like baseballs at a Little League game with the same frequency and accuracy of a 10-year-old pitcher.

The hope of most politicians is that if they call something is “common sense,” their proposal of a simple fix is all that is needed. More importantly, the expectation is calling something a “common sense solution,” it will dissuade the electorate from looking for deeper answers. You feel like we feel in the 10 seconds after hearing the idea. We must all be right… Right?

My suggestion - if an elected official tells you something is, “common sense,” assume they don’t want you to dig deeper and then find out why. A good politician will create a problem that only they can solve.

May’s Corporations Committee meeting was filled with common sense solutions for our state’s elections. The Committee took in presentations discussing our state elections as they stand today and an executive order from President Trump who laid out his hope for future changes to voting and registration. Keep in mind just because the executive order was released doesn’t necessarily mean changes will take place just yet. Article I, Section 4 of the US Constitution puts the responsibility for running elections squarely in the hands of the states. The Corps Committee asked the Legislative Service Office to draft 10 bills dealing with elections which failed to pass the Legislature for one reason or another in 2024. Here are a few of the items discussed, which may find their way into bill drafts:

Voter ID - A great example of “common sense,” legislation carrying a higher amount of nuance than you might think. The Secretary of State wants to axe Medicare cards from the list of approved voter IDs. Vote with a photo ID only, he says. Common sense, he says.

We’re fine with the idea of removal of a Medicare card, but would like to see another method of identity verification in its place and have offered a couple ideas. Forty-six of 50 other states currently offer some alternate method when a drivers license or state ID can’t be produced, such as for those who live in nursing homes.

The county clerks who administer our elections think around 300 people in the state used the Medicare card to vote last year. Will we lose those 300 people from the voting rolls if we require photo ID? Hard to say, but the Secretary and majority of the committee seems willing to roll the dice. As for us, we’d love to hear from you if you have someone you know who uses a Medicare card to vote, click here. We simply want to know why and what we could do to help folks get ID, or find another method for verifying identity at the polling place, which We wholeheartedly encourage everyone who can to get a state ID and even told you how to do it in this story. The LSO will draft a bill removing Medicare cards from use as voter ID, as well as student ID cards from colleges and universities. The clerks tell us student ID’s have inconsistencies from school-to-school, but standardization could easily take place. AARP policy reads, “policymakers should prohibit identification requirements that discourage or prevent citizens from voting, such as requiring voters to show an unexpired government-issued photo ID.”

Pen and Paper Ballots - Currently, there is just one county that uses voting machines as it’s primary voting method - Laramie County. These are the touchscreen machines that let you vote, kick out a ballot that you feed into a machine that counts your vote. A proposed bill would make pen and paper ballots the default method for voting in Wyoming, asking folks to fill in bubbles next to your favored candidate with pens. Those with disabilities could still use “electric marking devices,” if they so choose. The claim by some is there is no way to be sure if the electronic voting machine and the bar code is accurately recording your vote. AARP has no policy on pen and paper voting.

Hand Counts of Ballots - There does seem to be a strong push from Freedom Caucus members to ban machine counting of ballots. AARP has no policy on hand counts - though we have sat through a number of debates on the issue. This change could pose more problems than solutions. Counting machines, known as tabulators,” scan the ballot as it is handed in and saves the image of the ballot in addition to counting the votes. There is no disruption in the chain of custody from the voter to the machine. Required testing and auditing procedures are in place. Hand counts seem to come with more cost than we understood, in both dollars and people costs. A test of hand counting in Gillette last year suggested the need for hundreds of volunteers and up to $1.3 million to make the hand count method work just for Campbell County. A common sense approach that might not be as simple as we thought. Interestingly enough, there are already written policies and procedures for clerks to follow in a hand count, which they do sometimes perform in smaller elections.

Prohibition on Ballot Boxes - This bill made it through the House and through the Senate Corps Committee last year before getting stuck in the Majority Floor Leader’s desk drawer. The bill would have removed the ability for counties to offer voting drop boxes. By the time the bill left the Senate Corps Committee, the bill was amended to allow for ballot boxes on the requirement that they were a “secure receptacle in the courthouse.” Think of a bank’s night deposit or something that has a way to drop off a ballot from the outside, but is built into the courthouse itself. Our members seem to like the access and ability to drop off a vote without sending it through the mail, allowing for a straight-forward chain-of-custody. The drop boxes also allow for fewer steps than it would take to go inside to the clerk’s office. States that restrict ballot handling can disenfranchise voters in nursing facilities or those with mobility impairments who cannot travel to drop off their ballots. It is a county decision at this point whether to allow dropboxes and seven counties did so in 2024. Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee suggests around 20% of the Laramie County ballot was dropped into the dropbox outside the courthouse in 2024. It seems to us like standardizing security cameras (which most already have), and construction methods for the boxes could be a great compromise.

Other bills that will be drafted by the Legislative Service Office include:

• Voting Machine Tests - This would standardize testing processes, procedures, and notice of when the machines will be tested. The clerks are onboard for this one. No AARP policy on this one.
• Independent Candidate Requirements - Raises the threshold of signatures needed to run as an independent in statewide elections, and increases the number of days for an independent to report their candidacy to the Secretary of State.
• Poll Watchers - This allows poll watchers to stick around a polling place after the election ends. It would also mandate they have a chair available. Not sure we have a policy on this, but love the idea of a comfy chair.
• Random Hand Audits - The Secretary of State would instruct county clerks to conduct an audit of 1% of the votes in one county precinct for each county. The Secretary would then compare them to the tabulation machines’ results. 
• Hand counts for recounts - This would allow hand recounts when requested by the candidate.
• Ballot Harvesting - Restricts the number of absentee ballots you can hand in to just those from your household. We’d like to see it allow for nursing home resident ballots to be dropped off as well. That seems pretty common throughout the country. Opponents suggest there is rampant voter fraud happening in nursing homes. That’s news to us.

Our voting policy is well spelled-out in our PolicyBook (go ahead, check it out. Anyone can.) and reads, “policymakers should encourage and promote maximum participation in the electoral process. They should adopt voting systems and procedures that expand the range of voting options.” That is our goal as we have these conversations. If you are around me very long, you will likely hear me say, “governing is nuance,” and it is. Seldom are solutions as simple or common sense as they seem. It is our job to be sure the unintended consequences of a law aren’t considered before the bill is passed.

The discussion will continue at the committee’s next meeting, slated for Aug. 14 in Casper.