Leaders of the Park County Republican Party recently put together something of a political wish list, calling for a host of changes to state and local government.

At their biennial convention in late February, the local Republican Party passed 20 resolutions that include calls for judges to be directly elected by voters, for election results to be counted by hand and opposition to the storage of nuclear waste. 

Resolutions don’t have any legal effect, but represent the local party’s opinion on different issues of the day.

The resolutions were proposed at a party caucus ahead of the convention and most were passed with little or no debate. Turnout at the Feb. 28 event, which was held at the Park County Fairgrounds, was lower than recent conventions, with just over 60 precinct committee people and other convention delegates present.

The package of passed resolutions, which were finalized and publicly released in late March, cover a wide range of topics:

• statements of support for Wyoming families, livestock producers and veterans; 

• calls for those convicted of rape and pedophilia to receive the death penalty; 

• a recommendation that the state party censure a Lander lawmaker for allegedly encouraging Democrats to participate in the Republican primary;

• requests for both kratom and THC to be treated as the most serious, schedule I drugs; and 

• opposition to putting taxpayer funds toward name, image and likeness compensation for collegiate athletes.

The GOP also took aim at the Wyoming Supreme Court’s recent decision that struck down the Legislature’s attempts to ban most abortions. The Supreme Court found that the state’s bans ran afoul of the Wyoming Constitution, which protects “health care decisions,” but the local Republican Party says it opposes “any definition of health care that nullifies the right to life.”

Electing judges?

The party also passed a resolution that calls for the state’s judges to be directly elected by the public rather than the current practice of having finalists nominated by a commission and then chosen by the governor; voters then decide whether to retain those judges and justices.

Precinct committeeman Jim Vetter of Cody said the existing system puts “too much power in the hands of our executive, which is our governor.”

“This brings more power back to the people,” Vetter said.

He said that roughly half of the United States elects judges and — in another provision endorsed within the resolution — allows voters to recall elected officials.

Precinct committeeman Colin Simpson of Cody, an attorney and the brother of Park County District Court Judge Bill Simpson, said the current setup has worked very well in Wyoming.

“I also feel that if we don’t like a particular opinion of the Supreme Court or a district court judge, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to say that we have to change the process,” Colin Simpson said.

He argued that the current system, which is known as the Missouri plan, includes checks and balances — with voters getting the chance to decide whether they want to retain a jurist.

“I also believe that when you inject money into the election of judges, that totally distorts the system,” Simpson said.

However, Park County Republican Party Chairman Vince Vanata said there needs to be a better way to hold elected officials and judges accountable.

“We need to take away the partisanship and the good old boys [method] of appointing judges throughout the state,” Vanata said; he said “it didn’t look good” when Gov. Mark Gordon appointed his then-attorney general, Bridget Hill, to the state Supreme Court last year.

Precinct committeeman and Powell City Councilman Troy Bray, meanwhile, said the system needs to be fixed because “we keep getting lawyers as judges.”

Convention delegate Jimmy Rush of Wapiti later echoed the call for elected judges, saying to applause that he “would rather vote on the character of a man over his education any day.”

Hand counting

The bulk of the text of that resolution actually related to hand-counting election results, being one of the two statements the party passed in support of hand-counting. The other resolution, brought by precinct committeewoman Robin Berry of Cody, also called for the abolition of early and absentee voting, with voting only allowed on Election Day, which would become a federal holiday.

“If you can’t figure it out, four years in advance or two years in advance, when voting day is and make appropriate arrangements, then you have a problem. You shouldn’t be allowed to vote,” Berry said to some applause.

Precinct committeeman Tim Lasseter of Cody, who ran for county clerk in 2022 and is currently running for commissioner, also spoke in favor of hand counting.

“Not a single election in Wyoming has been proven accurate in the last 15 years, and I challenge anyone to dispute that,” Lasseter said. “You can’t prove it because they won’t let you — not our Secretary of State, not our county commissioners, not any elected official in the state, not even the governor, can tell me that the elections are accurate compared to actual ballots.”

Wyoming ballots — which are all cast on paper — are not made public and are generally not made available for hand counting under current law and procedure. Wyoming’s machines from Elections Systems & Software are tested and their results audited in an effort to ensure that ballots are tabulated accurately. However, critics contend those verification measures are inadequate, with Lasseter asserting that “we have blindly ceded the vote to a for-profit machine company that are not our friends and neighbors.”

Though both resolutions passed, there were a couple delegates who expressed support for the continuation of early and absentee voting.

The county party’s official platform — a collection of foundational beliefs that the GOP revisits every two years — simply says that elections “must be secure and trustworthy.”

On nuclear waste

Other planks in the platform include support for capitalism, constitutional rights, limited taxation and government, traditional marriage between one man and one woman, parental rights and opposition to mandatory unionization of public employees, “sanctuary” statuses or males competing in female sports; the platform defines gender as “an immutable characteristic established by God and manifested by DNA.”

Convention delegates discussed the possibility of basically scrapping the county party’s platform and simply adopting the nearly identical Wyoming Republican Party platform as their own. However, opponents voted that idea down, saying they still wanted the opportunity to make the Park County GOP’s document more locally focused and conservative than the state’s if needed.

Local GOP members did vote to recommend that the state party add a platform plank that would call on Wyoming to reject any “high-level radioactive waste” from out of state.