First Major Hurdle Cleared
Yesterday, the Wyoming House of Representatives gave FINAL APPROVAL to HJ0008, our Free and Fair Elections resolution. The final vote was a comfortable 37-20-3, with one of the three absent legislators also being a strong supporter.
Credit for this outstanding result must go to the hundreds of volunteers all over Wyoming who circulated petitions, entered data, served on committees, and who made critical contacts with legislators over the past two years. Several of the speakers in favor of the resolution spoke during the debate tonight about how they were moved by the grass-roots efforts of all of our volunteers. That is *all of you*. We are so proud of your dedication to this effort, and so excited that our resolution now moves on to the Wyoming Senate.
According to the final tally of the vote, the following 37 representatives voted Yes: Barlow, Blake, Brown, Burlingame, Clifford, Connolly, Crank, Dayton-Selman, Duncan, Eyre, Flitner, Freeman, Furphy, Haley, Henderson, Kinner, Harshman, Kirkbride, Larson Lloyd, Lindholm, Loucks, MacGuire, Newsome, Nicholas, Obermueller, Olsen, Paxton, Pelkey, Pownall, Roscoe, Salazar, Schwartz, Sommers, Sweeney, Winter, Yin, and Zwonitzer. If any of these are your representatives, or if you have a personal relationship with any of them, please email them to thank them for their support!
Shout-outs also to Rep. Zwontizer (our primary sponsor), co-sponsors Reps. Duncan and Furphy, and Reps. Kinner and Blake, who all spoke eloquently during the debate about the need for this resolution. And special thanks to our lobbyists Laurie Urbigkit, Sherlyn Kaiser and Kyle Urbigkit, whose experience and knowledge of this process were invaluable in steering us to this great outcome. We could not have done this without them!
NOW: we need to roll up our sleeves and get right back to work, since the measure now moves over to the Senate where we know we have a heavy lift to replicate this success. Join us for this important conference call to talk strategy as we move forward!
– Ken Chestek, Wyoming Promise Chair
– Lynn Horton Morrison, Wyoming Promise Vice-Chair
– Shelby Shadwell, Wyoming Promise Treasurer