Record number of new voter registrations

Now that the dust has settled with election season, Hot Springs County Clerk Nina Webber is able to give us break down as to the voter turnout in county.

Webber said her office still has hundreds of new and same-day registrations to put into the Wyoming Registration system. Those votes were, of course, counted in the election, but all must be entered in the state’s registration system within 30 days of the election.

The original general election results have now been deemed official by the clerk's office.

As for total voter turnout, this is the highest voter turnout in recent history for an election in Hot Springs County with 2,644 ballots cast. According to voter turn out numbers printed in the Independent Record over the last decade, this is the highest voter turnout for at least the past ten years.

Voter turnout in the General Election in 2008 comes the closest to 2016 with 2,563 votes that year.

There was also a very high number of absentee ballots sent out this year. The clerk’s office prepared 659 absentee ballots with 634 returned for counting.

There were so many voters they actually ran out of ballots for District 3 - Precinct 3, the rural district.

Weeks before each election, the clerk’s office has to determine how many voters they think they will have and order that amount of ballots from the printer. In spite of ordering more than the usual number, figuring there would be a high turnout for this election, they still had to photocopy 26 ballots in order to have enough.

The photocopied ballots had to be hand counted since they were on regular paper rather than the thicker paper recognized by the voting machines.