CHEYENNE - The Wyoming Legislature is one of 16 'chambers' in the nation that has a combined voting system that mixes the traditional oral roll-call vote with an electronic recording system, a national legislative expert said Wednesday.

And the system works well for the Wyoming Legislature with its relatively small size'- 90 members - and short sessions, said Brenda Erickson, who has served as the National Council on State Legislatures' expert on legislative process for nearly 20 years.

It would not work well in a state like New Hampshire, which has 400 House members.

Erickson reported to the Legislature's Select Committee on Legislative Technology Wednesday on a survey of voting systems used by the nation's 99 legislative 'chambers' - two each in 49 states and Nebraska's unicameral Legislature.

She said the trend is for states with traditional systems to move to combined voting system.

"They have the formality that they love, and it streamlines the process behind the scenes,' Erickson said.

Wyoming, she said, is one of the few states that post votes in nearly 'real time.' The other states wait until they can verify the votes so the tally is the same as the one that goes into the printed journal.

She said she isn't aware of any state that takes a recorded vote on everything.

In most states with electronic voting, the legislators have a set of 'hard-wired' buttons on their desks that can be touched only by the person assigned to that seat.

Erickson said security is paramount in an electronic voting system. Abuse of the system was a major issue in at least three states recently.

In one, she said, a YouTube video showed legislators scrambling all over the chambers pushing buttons on the desks.

In another case, a person who wasn't even a member of the Legislature or a citizen of the state cast the deciding vote on a bill.

"If you go to a fully electronic system, you need to think how to deal with abuses ahead of time," Erickson said.

The Equality State Policy Center and the Wyoming League of Women Voters have supported'full electronic voting for the Legislature for years.

Sarah Gorin, chairwoman of the Equality State Policy Center, told the committee the issue is accountability.

A couple of years ago when the wildlife trust fund was first set up in the budget bill, there were no recorded votes on the fund, only voice votes, she pointed out.

Her group wants more recorded votes and doesn't buy the argument of legislators that they take up too much time.

She also said that while legislators publicly will argue against the aesthetics of a display board in the chambers that shows legislators' votes, privately they say the reason they oppose electronic voting is they want to see how other legislators are voting on bills.

"To make this thing fly, they have to have a component so they can see how their colleagues are voting,' Gorin said after the meeting.

Earlier Gorin told the committee that the Legislature's process has improved by 'light years' in the last 15 years.

The committee members agreed to prepare a report on their findings for the legislative management council, to include the declaration that Wyoming has an electronic voting system.

The committee will vote on the report at its next meeting.

But the committee also will look at display board technology to record legislators' votes.

Contact Joan Barron at joan.barron@trib.com or by phone at 307-632-1244.

* Last we knew: Advocacy groups have called for the Legislature to use full electronic voting.

* The latest: A national expert says the Wyoming Legislature's voting system is better than many others.

* What's next: Lawmakers may consider using a display board to record votes.

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