By Karla Pomeroy
Staff Writer
It's official: Canvassing board verifies Tuesday's election
Ward 3 resident qualifies as write-in candidate
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Karla Pomeroy
The canvassing board of Democrat LaVertha Gotier and Republican Joan Skinner share a laugh after finishing verifying the votes in Ten Sleep and before moving on to the next precinct Thursday afternoon.
WORLAND - While the county commission race garnered the most write-ins, only three write-in votes impacted any race during Tuesday's election.
Washakie County Clerk Mary Grace Strauch said the canvassing board of Democrat Lavertha Gotier and Republican Joan Skinner verified the election with no changes to any race. The board also verified write-ins with Michael Neufer receiving enough votes for the Ward 3 four-year term, currently held by Marcus Sanchez.
Strauch said Neufer has five days from official notification to decide if he will accept the write-in nomination. "I've contacted his wife and she said he would pick up his letter today, which I have here at the office. If he does that he'll have five days from today," Strauch said.
She added that Neufer will have to file at the city clerk's office and pay the $25 filing fee to be on the general election ballot.
Strauch said she had several write-ins for precinct committee persons with many of the races open.
She said the largest write-ins were 102 for Republican county commissioner. Since the 102 write-ins would not impact the race with Aaron Anderson receiving 1,453 votes, the votes do not have to be specifically counted by name.
She said there were 20 Democratic write-ins for commissioner as well. There was no Democrat on the ballot but partisan races require at least 25 write-in votes to qualify a candidate, Strauch said.
Tuesday's election, which saw 2,247 Washakie County voters cast votes, went smooth, Strauch said. She said she has heard no complaints and results started coming in at 7:10 p.m. on election night.
The election judges, of which the county utilizes 42, had time throughout the day to input the 320 absentee ballots the county received, Strauch noted.
There were 3,494 registered voters who were registered as of Aug. 11 day for a 64 percent voter turnout. Strauch said it will be a few weeks before they have a firm count of how many additional residents registered to vote on the day of the election.
Strauch said the voter turnout was a bit higher than she anticipated this year, noting she does expect a higher turnout for the general election.
