After losing in or sitting out the primary election, a handful of candidates staged extraordinarily successful write-in campaigns during the general election.

Gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien, who only fell a few hundred votes short of Gov. Mark Gordon in Park County during the summer primary election, received the most write-in votes in the county at 1,256. That was only 30 votes less than Theresa Livingston, the Democratic candidate on the ballot, but well below Gordon’s November tally of 9,700.

While none of the write-in candidates were successful aside from two small races involving only write-in candidates, the Park County Elections office reported some unusually high tallies for a number of candidates. County voters, elections staff said, submitted write-in votes at a much higher level when compared to both previous elections and the state as a whole.

In the 2018 general election, there were only 123 write-in votes cast for governor in Park County, compared to 1,284 last month. In the 2020 November election, there were just 36 write-in votes for U.S. representative, compared to 562 in the recent election.

Park County also accounted for a disproportionately large percentage of the write-in votes in several races. For instance, although accounting for only about 6.5% of the total ballots cast in Wyoming, Park County voters accounted for about 26% of all the write-ins for superintendent of public instruction.

State law only requires a review of write-ins when they could affect the result of a race as it is a time consuming process, but elections staff determined to dig deeper on statewide, countywide and select local races due to public interest and a number of active write-in campaigns in the fall.

Superintendent of Public Instruction and former Cody resident Brian Schroeder, who lost a tight primary battle to keep his seat, received 1,060 write-in votes in Park County. Other Republican primary losers receiving large numbers of votes included Liz Cheney (527 votes) and Tara Nethercott (240) for U.S. Representative and Secretary of State, respectively.

Locally the most write-in votes came in the county commissioners race, with 1,142 write-ins cast. Tyson Williams, who finished with 1,738 votes in the primary to finish fifth in the primary, received 805 write-in votes in the general. In 2020, with two commissioners on the ballot (compared to four choices in November), there were 445 total write-in votes.

Williams, Schroeder and Bien were among a set of write-in candidates endorsed by the Conservative Roundup PAC, a group of county residents that implored voters to write-in candidates deemed more conservative than those chosen during the primary. The PAC’s write-in push also included Tim Lasseter, who tallied 614 votes for Park County School Board 6 in Cody, Nina Webber, who received 515 votes for House District 24, and Rex Rich, who received 282 votes in House District 25.

Even outside the PAC’s endorsements, there seemed to be a general increase in voters continuing to support candidates who lost in the primary. For instance, outgoing state Sen. R.J. Kost, R-Powell, received 209 votes in the general election in Senate District 19 after falling to Rep. Dan Laursen, R-Powell, in the primary.

Additionally, Leda Pojman, who lost her bid for county attorney in the Republican primary, received 155 write-in votes, Lasseter received 93 votes for county clerk, the office he sought in the primary election, while second-place coroner candidate Emily Denney received 85 write-in votes and third-place finisher Zach Thompson received 34.