Wyoming’s Republican Gov. Mark Gordon on Friday vetoed a set of rules proposed by Secretary of State Chuck Gray that would have required prospective voters to prove their Wyoming residency to register to vote.
Wyoming’s election code says voters must be both state residents and U.S. citizens. But would-be voters are currently just required to provide proof of identity, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Gray proposed the new rules as amendments to Chapter 2 of the Secretary of State’s Election Procedures.
Under the proposed rules, voters could prove their residency with either a driver’s license, passport, federal identification card, photo identification from a Wyoming public school or university, a military card, an identification card given to a military dependent, or a tribal identification card. These documents are also used to currently prove identity.
If an individual did not have one of the aforementioned identification forms but could “provide…their Wyoming driver’s license number and any two” of a list of other documents, any of those documents with a Wyoming address on it would “constitute proof of Wyoming residency.” The documents include a social security card, birth certificate, or a military draft record, among other options. Voters without a driver’s license could also provide the last four digits of their Social Security number along with two of the aforementioned documents.
Gray’s proposed rules also mandated that “No person shall be allowed to register to vote if their presented identification contains any indication that they are not
