Nearly four months have passed since 50 Weston County citizens petitioned Governor Gordon to remove their County Clerk, Becky Hadlock, from office. Their drastic request was no mere temper tantrum. In their complaint, they documented a string of election code violations reaching back to 2020.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back was a false filing with the Secretary of State on the day after the 2024 election.
Wyoming law required Hadlock to examine 75 randomly selected ballot images from the previous day in order to verify that the machines read them correctly. Her official report found “no issues” in any of the 75 ballots. Weston County’s chief election official asserted 100 percent machine accuracy.
Until she didn’t.
Six days later, she filed a new report that cataloged issues in 21 of those same 75 ballots. The first report had failed to report the miscounts present in 28 percent of the ballots that she was required to examine.
Hadlock did not explain why a new report was filed days after the deadline. Nor did she explain why the two were so wildly different. This cannot stand.
Voters rely, absolutely, on the word of their county clerks. Hadlock’s conflicting audit reports remind us that this is not just a Weston County issue.
When your county clerk certifies that she followed all the applicable laws, her word is all that you have. If she didn’t, you will likely never know it.
That’s why every election official in the state ought to be clamoring for answers. That’s why legislators should craft laws that make voters less dependent on the mere word of elected officials. That’s why the Wyoming Association of County Clerks should be all over this.
At the end of December, Secretary of State Chuck Gray promised that his office would seek answers and issue a report in early 2025. On Monday he delivered that report to the governor.
In it, Gray came to the same conclusion to which the people of Weston County had come. He formally asked Gordon to do what only the governor can do—initiate court proceedings to remove Hadlock from office.
When Gordon dismissively told Cowboy State Daily that “[Gray] likes to make a lot of noise,” I caught my breath.
After refusing to comment on an ongoing investigation, did the governor just dismiss Gray’s formal request for investigation? Many thought so. But on closer examination, he was only belittling Gray’s loud advocacy for election laws. The confusion was as unfortunate as it was avoidable.
The central question remains: Which of Hadlock’s two reports is true? And why does a false one exist? After weeks of waiting for an answer, the people of Weston County could only imagine two scenarios:
Either Hadlock cooked the books after finding 21 anomalies, or she lied about whether she had performed the audit at all. After months of investigation, the secretary of state came to the same fork in the road.
On this basis, both the Weston County citizenry and the secretary of state have now asked Gordon to have his attorney general investigate and prosecute.
It is not an idle question, and it cannot be swept under the rug. Were other election laws violated? How could we know? Have vital steps in the election code been skipped elsewhere? These are troubling questions.
Statutory procedures are not just technicalities. They exist because of a careful and exacting legislative process. Every part of the process is designed “to secure the purity of elections, and guard against abuses of the elective franchise” (Wyo. Const. Art. 6, Sec. 13).
The false filling did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in the middle of a debacle that saw hundreds of votes go uncounted. I encourage you to read the secretary of state’s detailed explanation for yourself. Of course, this is only one side of the story. Resist the temptation to be judge, jury and executioner.
But on the other hand, everybody from the governor to the man on the street should demand to hear the other side of the story.
Clerk Hadlock has had more than four months to explain to the public how her false report of November 6, 2024 was not willfully false. Now the ball is in Governor Gordon’s court.
Unless and until the chief law enforcement official in the state can explain the existence of two contradictory reports, he must act. Nobody is asking him to remove Hadlock unilaterally. His duty is to bring the matter before the court.
Our entire system of election integrity is built on the word of Wyoming’s county clerks. A false filing is a big deal.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email
