Vote tally now official

No changes were made to the results released on election night after the Crook County Canvass Board came together for its post-election audit on Thursday.

Though several races came down to the wire, only one was close enough to meet the criteria to trigger an automatic recount. Meanwhile, two potential candidates were identified via write-ins for seats where no name appeared on the ballot.

Recount

The only race that came close enough to require a recount was the Hulett trustee race for Crook County School District. The top two candidates for this position were Hannah Ista with 1179 votes (43.17% of the total) and Brian Neiman with 1173 votes (42.95%).

As the difference between the candidates was less than 1%, Crook County Clerk's Office staff and an election judge conducted a recount. The winner was confirmed to be Hannah Ista.

Other races did see very close results, including those for Sundance mayor and Moorcroft council member. However, no others qualified for an automatic recount.

"The difference of the vote has to be less than 1% of the total votes of the top vote-getter," explains County Clerk Melissa Jones.

"There were about three of them that we had to re-check, but only one of those required an automatic recount."

Write-ins

Despite a high-profile write-in campaign for Senate District #1, the canvass board was able to verify that no write-in candidate received enough votes to affect the results of the election.

However, write-in votes were necessary to determine the winners of two particular races: Crook County Museum District trustee and Crook County Natural Resource District urban supervisor. No candidate appeared on the ballot for either of these seats.

The canvass board determined the successful write-in candidates for these seats to be Lorie Marchant and Casey Devish. Marchant received 24 write-in votes for the museum district trustee seat, while Devish received 75 write-in votes for the natural resource district.

Voting Stats

Voter turnout this year broadly matched the numbers from 2018, when the last general election took place. Of the registered voters in Crook County, 72% cast their ballot, compared to 74% in 2018.

The number of absentee ballots sent out and returned has increased since the last general election, with 759 sent out this year as compared to 658 in 2018, and 711 returned as compared to 619 in 2018.

However, the number of registered voters has also increased over the last four years.

On the day of the general election, Crook County had a total of 4547 registered voters, including 97 new voters on election day itself. On election day in 2018, Crook County had 4113 registered voters.

This addition of 434 registered voters over the last year is an increase of more than 10% of the total number.