Election denier Chuck Gray wins Wyoming GOP U.S. House primary

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, one of the country’s most prominent election-denying officials and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, won the Republican primary for the state’s lone U.S. House seat Tuesday.

The victory puts Gray on a path to take his anti-voting agenda from Wyoming’s top election office to Congress.

Gray emerged from a crowded Republican field to compete for the seat being vacated by Rep. Harriet Hageman (R), who is running for U.S. Senate. In deep-red Wyoming, the Republican nominee will enter November with a significant advantage.

Gray has spent years promoting false claims about the 2020 election and pushing restrictions on voting.

During his successful 2022 campaign for secretary of state, Gray sponsored screenings of 2000 Mules, the debunked film that falsely claimed widespread ballot trafficking helped steal the presidential election from Trump. The conservative group whose allegations formed the basis of the film, True the Vote, later acknowledged in court that it did not have evidence to substantiate its claims. 

Gray also told voters Wyoming had “tremendous problems” with its elections and campaigned on eliminating ballot drop boxes.

Once in office, Gray continued targeting drop boxes, urging county clerks to stop using them and arguing they were illegal. Wyoming county election officials pushed back, maintaining that the secure drop boxes were permitted under state law.

Gray also made requiring strict documentary proof of citizenship to vote a centerpiece of his tenure. 

He helped push a 2025 law mandating people to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and Wyoming residency when registering to vote, calling it the top priority of his “election integrity” agenda. He has since championed the federal SAVE America Act, which would impose strict nationwide proof of citizenship and photo ID requirements.

“The SAVE America Act is so important to providing common-sense, baseline protections in our elections,” Gray said in March, adding that the legislation has his “full and complete support.”

Gray went even further earlier this year when he obeyed the Trump Justice Department’s sweeping demand for Wyoming’s full, unredacted voter rolls, handing federal officials data that included voters’ addresses and sensitive identification information. A retired Wyoming attorney, George Powers, subsequently sought a criminal investigation, alleging Gray violated state law by releasing confidential voter information without legal authority.

Gray vehemently defended the decision and attacked critics of the move, including Democracy Docket.

Powers’ claims, “in coordination with media outlets like Democracy Docket is nothing more than Trump Derangement Syndrome, clothed in an attempt to use lawfare and the leftwing media to attack my actions on election integrity,” Gray told Democracy Docket.

Gray added that he “maintained compliance with the law and these actions have been carried out in close consultation with the Attorney General.”

Gray’s victory now puts an election denier who used his power as Wyoming’s chief election official to advance Trump’s anti-voting agenda one step closer to Congress — where Republicans have pushed many of the same restrictions he championed back home.