On Saturday, April 9, 2016, Bernie caucus goers in Natrona County outnumbered Hillary caucus goers 3 to 1 in person but lost the county due to absentee ballots designed to help Hillary win. Bernie won Wyoming state-wide 56% to Hillary’s 44% but got 7 delegates to Hillary’s 11 due to superdelegates and delegate rounding math.
Party officials denied wrongdoing and haven’t put changes in place yet to ensure it won’t happen again. On the two year anniversary, we wrote an open letter telling that story and calling for reforms to make sure it won't happen again.
Please read our letter that chronicles all that is suspicious about the 2016 caucus,*
and then sign our petition.
*Short on time? Read the shortened digest of our letter instead.
Watch this clip which captures our outrage as summed up by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.
Sanders supporters (on the right) out-numbered Hillary supporters (on the left) 3 to 1 in person on Saturday April 9, 2016 but Hillary pulled an upset to participants and was awarded 20 delegates to Bernie's 18 because of the absentee ballots called surrogate affidavits. Many feeling the Bern were first time caucus-goers who were elated with energy and excitement to see visually they'd helped Bernie win Natrona County--that is, until absentee ballot totals were read in. Many left in suspicious outrage.
Image Credit: Casper Star Tribune, Jena VonHofe
Visually, it appeared to caucus goers by the poor turnout on Hillary's side that Bernie had won Natrona County by a virtual landslide until absentee ballots were read in.
Image Credit: Casper Star Tribune, Jena VonHofe
Visually, it appeared to caucus goers, many of whom were first timers, that they clearly won Natrona County's caucus after months of campaigning for Bernie judging by the clear supermajority of caucus participants being Berners.
Image Credit: Casper Star Tribune, Jena VonHofe
These photos serve as proof of the impact of the mailing of absentee surrogate affidavits exclusively to targeted likely Hillary voters. On the left, you'll note a relative absence of people and a generally more middle to late aged crowd. On the right, you'll note an abundance of people of all ages who missed the memo that they could stay home because the Sanders campaign didn't mass mail absentee ballots to them like the Clinton campaign had because Wyoming Democratic Party officials who were partial to Hillary strongly suggested they should not dare. After, they then accepted the surrogates that resulted from Hillary's campaign's absentee surrogate affidavits they'd strongly indicated wouldn't be accepted from Bernie's campaign early on. We requested repeatedly to audit surrogate affidavits in order to ensure they had not accepted absentee ballots for Hillary after the mail deadline but rigidly adhered to it for Sanders ballots and discovered that their mishandling in counting meant they could not be verified, so our group felt all surrogates should be invalidated en masse as a result of their mishandling. Read the letter chronicling these events to learn more.