CASPER — The county clerk accused of botching portions of the 2024 general election in northeast Wyoming and filing a false post-election audit did not show up Monday for a legislative subcommittee meeting for which she was subpoenaed.
Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlcok could face up to $100 in fines and up to six months in jail for not complying with the subpoena — if a prosecutor takes up a case against her for failing to appear for the subpoena.
The committee is planning a virtual work session Monday to develop solutions to possible gaps in election or public accountability laws.
Hadlock has been under statewide public scrutiny since the general election last November.
She allowed faulty ballots into the election. The machines read them wrong, then incorrectly concluded that more than 1,200 people chose not to vote House Speaker Chip Neiman, according to committee testimony.
She told others that the 90% undervote was a protest vote against Neiman, Newsletter Journal employee Walter Sprague, Gray, and Neiman told the committee on Monday.
The ballot mixup wasn’t the worst part or the key issue, Secretary of State Chuck Gray said repeatedly.
The fulcrum, to Gray, is that Hadlock apparently missed, skewed, ignored or lied about 21 ballot errors during her post-election audit. =The post-election ballot audit she sent to Gray’s office said there were not errors in the sample 75 ballots she reviewed, he added.
In his view, there are only two explanations: either she filed a fraudulent audit, or she didn’t conduct one at all, said Gray.
‘Please Come Forward’
The subcommittee on the Weston County Clerk, which convened Monday in Casper as an offshoot of the legislative Management Audit Committee. The latter voted July 9 to subpoena Hadlock – a rare move, as legislative committees often invite, rather than compel, speakers to present.
A staffer with the Legislative Service Office contacted Hadlock Sept. 8 to ask her availability to testify in person or remotely, according to a letter from Hadlock, which Subcommittee Chair Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Willams, R-Cody, provided Monday to Cowboy State Daily.
She said she had a scheduling conflict.
Two LSO staffers on Sept. 9 asked Hadlock if members of the county’s hand counting committee could testify.
Two could: election judges Deb Piana and Ann Slagle, says the letter.
Still, says Hadlock’s letter, she received the subpoena Sept. 23, which Management Audit Committee Chair Rep. Christopher Knapp, R-Gillette, had signed.
“I am writing you this letter to directly confirm that I will not be attending the hearing but have arranged two perfectly qualified individuals to attend instead,” wrote Hadlock.
Rodriguez-Williams called for Hadlock just after 10:30 a.m. Monday, just in case.
“Ms. Hadlock, please come forward,” she said.
A pause followed. No one came.
The committee took a break, after which Rodriguez-Williams announced, “the proper authorities will be notified that a violation of the subpoena has been made and we will run through the process from this point on.”
Piana and Slagle both testified that they didn’t realize they were expected to testify in Hadlock’s place, though they were both willing to testify generally.
Who Prosecutes?
State law says the presiding officer of the committee “shall” certify a failure to appear for legislative subpoena to the “appropriate” district attorney.
That section of law is unclear on whether that would be the Weston County Attorney (whose jurisdiction overlaps Hadlock’s home and office) or the Natrona County District Attorney (whose jurisdiction covers the Casper building where the meeting was held).
Another portion of the law says the presiding officer also can notify the District Court in the area where the proceeding was held, which in this case would be the Natrona County District Court.
As of midday Monday, LSO staffers were still dissecting these legal provisions.
Rep. Marlene Brady, R-Green River, who is not a subcommittee member but who attended the meeting and spoke, suggested tweaking state law to increase the penalties for failing to appear.
Knapp told Cowboy State Daily in a text message that Hadlock didn’t give an explanation for her scheduling conflict.
He also said the subcommittee “will need to make the determination if they would like to extend another opportunity for (Hadlock) to testify in person or by Zoom, on or before their next meeting.”
He said the meeting was to be a fact-finding meeting, so “we can then improve the current law or propose legislation in our checks and balances, accountability and trust in our elections.”
Mark Koep, a Crook County resident, told the committee he was shocked that the clerk didn’t appear.
“(That) seems to be a pretty big red flag that (she) might not be following the laws of the state of Wyoming,” said Koep.
An attendant at Hadlock’s office told Cowboy State Daily she was not at the office that day; he relayed the outlet’s message to her.
Hadlock did not respond to that message or to an email request for comment by publication time.
The Lost Trust
Neiman was running unopposed, and so too were county commissioners whose races were affected, so the faulty votes and lack of votes didn’t change the outcome for practical purposes.
But the errors left many people devoid of trust in their elections, and some officials questioning whether their own losses or wins were legitimate, Slagle told the subcommittee.
County Clerk’s Association of Wyoming President and Platte County Clerk Malcolm Ervin emphasized that point in his own testimony
So did Neiman, who spoke to the committee.
“It obviously exposes the problems in our system that we can already see – our vote can disappear,” said Neiman. “How in the world does that happen?
“Our elections must be above reproach,” he continued. “This is not a place we can make mistakes.”
As For The Governor …
Gray criticized Gov. Mark Gordon, who in May issued a letter explaining why he declined to authorize the pursuit of an action to remove Hadlock from office.
Gray in his complaint to the governor regarding Hadlock’s actions had emphasized the post-election audit.
Gordon didn’t address that in his declination letter.
“(He) completely ignored the number one finding in our investigation related to the Weston County Clerk, which was the filing of the post-election audit,” said Gray. “It was completely ignored.”
Other county clerks later testified that there’s no way Hadlock could have missed 21 errors by accident if she reviewed the ballots.
Betsy Anderson, Gordon’s deputy chief of staff, countered during her testimony via virtual link.
Only an “elector” of the problem region or the county commission had legal standing to ask the governor to pursue Hadlock’s removal from office, said Anderson.
Gray is not an elector in Weston County.
So the governor’s investigation and declination letter stayed within the scope of the electors’ complaint – and their interviews. Neither of those forums addressed the post-election audit, said Anderson.
Gordon’s complaint then, focused on Hadlock’s ballot mixup, which he said didn’t comprise willful negligence, misconduct or malfeasance.
“And this is the decision we’ve come up with based on what is the authority he has today,” said Anderson.
Gordon in an email said he takes election integrity election seriously.
“A single note of distrust in our system can reverberate to many times its size, even in uncontested elections like this one where the outcome was never affected,” wrote the governor. “Decisions of the voters should not be casually cast aside in favor of a process in which only a few can participate in nominating a replacement officer without compelling evidence of misconduct or malfeasance.”
That’s an echo of his decision letter, in which he noted that the people of Weston County had elected Hadlock, so the decision of one person – the governor – to pursue her removal should only follow a high bar of evidence of willful misconduct.
“Removing an elected official is a serious matter - impacting the will of the people,” Gordon wrote. “My actions were based on the legal authority granted to the chief executive of Wyoming.”
He said he’s noted Gray’s concerns, but “his legal lack of standing remains.”
Neiman in the committee meeting cast Gordon’s emphasis on local electoral control as ironic, as what happened with the Weston County ballots impacted the local electoral count.
Hand Counting
The conversation circled back repeatedly to the idea of hand counting.
Gray said he supported a 2025 legislative bill, which ultimately failed, to ban election machines.
Sen. Bob Ide, R-Casper, asked presenters their opinion on hand counting.
One witness, Michelle Ritter of Sheridan County, cast the option as a fine example of community involvement and said high school upperclassmen could participate. Many spoke in favor of hand counting, including Neiman.
The longtime Fremont County Clerk Julie Freese said she’s not opposed to hand counting but said it’s time-consuming. She suggested easing into the process and finding ways to accommodate people who aren’t comfortable having their votes counted by machine.
Political analyst and podcaster Joey Correnti warned the committee that rural Wyoming areas may struggle to find hand counters if the law requires that method.
“Unless we want to make it like jury duty and force people to count ballots,” said Correnti, “I think we want to be very careful of the language we put in there.”
Ervin said the county clerks have been working to address issues and training needs that this controversy has thrown into relief. If lawmakers and county clerks are to pursue additional election checks together, Wyoming should set its primary election (held in August) earlier, so that the clerks have more time to process ballots and prepare for the general election, he said.
He also blamed the Weston County issue on “human error.”
Rick Weibel, a computer analyst and Republican politician of South Dakota, later told the committee he believed it was both human and machine error. The machine failed to detect an error it should have, he said.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
