Originally charged with two felonies each punishable by up to five years in prison and $10,000, the former Weston County Clerk who admitted to causing errors in the 2024 general election was sentenced Wednesday to pay a $500 fine and $220 in other court costs and fees.
Circuit Court Judge Lynda Bush found that “no term of incarceration or period of probation shall be imposed” on Becky Hadlock.
Hadlock had a plea agreement in place in which she agreed to plead guilty — and gave that plea Wednesday — to a misdemeanor charge of election law violation.
The plea agreement said that in exchange, she’d pay the $720 in fines, costs and fees.
Bush didn’t have to accept that plea agreement, but if the judge had rejected it, Hadlock would have been able to withdraw her guilty plea and renegotiate her case, the agreement says.
Hadlock, her attorney Ryan Semerad, and special prosecutor Dan Itzen filed the agreement Tuesday.
That’s about six weeks after Itzen charged Hadlock with two different felonies: violation of the election code by an election official, and falsifying election documents.
Had she been convicted for both and sentenced to the maximum, she could have faced up to 10 years in prison and up to $20,000 in fines.
The Deal
One day after her April 8 charging and a roughly two-hour stay in the local jail, Hadlock announced her resignation as Weston County Clerk.
Itzen told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday that Hadlock quitting wasn’t part of the plea agreement.
It did, however, factor into the prosecutors’ thinking when they knocked the two felonies down to one misdemeanor and agreed not to push for jail time, he said.
“After she removed herself from office we reduced that to a misdemeanor and kind of went from there,” said Itzen. “That wasn’t part of the agreement.
"But as I looked at the case, that was one of the main goals of our office as well as law enforcement — removal from office and making sure those things don’t happen again.”
Meanwhile, Hadlock has also reached a settlement in a Casper Circuit Court case where she’s accused of defying a legislative subpoena, court documents indicate.
Lawmakers last September subpoenaed Hadlock to question her about her handling of the 2024 election.
Before Hadlock was subpoenaed, she had made it clear to legislative staffers that she could not attend the meeting as she’d scheduled doctors’ appointments for the day it was set to happen in Casper, court documents show.
Defying a legislative subpoena carries a penalty of up to six months in jail and $100 in fines.
It’s unclear what Hadlock’s plea agreement or settlement terms are in that case. They were not in the public-facing court file as of Thursday.
Itzen declined to comment on that case Thursday, noting that it’s still ongoing.
Hadlock, who pleaded not guilty in October, is set to change her plea in the subpoena case on June 24 in Casper Circuit Court.
Hadlock’s attorney declined Thursday to comment.
These 19 Months
Stretching across about 19 months, numerous news stories, one legislative investigation, a misdemeanor case, a civil removal case and then the felony arrest, Hadlock’s case is a familiar one in Wyoming political circles.
Before she resigned, the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office was pursuing a civil action alleging that Hadlock had committed misconduct or malfeasance in office, and that the court should remove her from office. That case became moot when Hadlock resigned.
Semerad in an earlier motion to dismiss the civil case called the saga “tortured and petty.”
He challenged whether Hadlock’s failure to appear for the legislative subpoena could comprise misconduct or malfeasance “in office” under Wyoming’s removal-from-office mechanism.
Hadlock has made headlines since November 2024, when she reportedly allowed faulty ballots to mingle with proper ballots in the general election, skewing two uncontested races and raising questions about whether her post-election audit was done in good faith.
“Prior to submitting her post-election audit,” says the attorney general’s petition to remove her, “Hadlock was informed that the anomalous undervote reported in the House District One race was likely due to ballot errors.”
Still, the petition adds, she submitted a post-election audit to the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office showing no errors affecting any of the 75 sample ballots audited.
That same day someone emailed her to confirm that faulty ballots mixed into the race had produced inaccurate results.
“Hadlock acknowledged the error but did not withdraw or correct her audit at that time,” says the petition.
She later agreed to a hand count, and the election results were correct by three days after the election, Nov. 8, 2024.
Complaints Filed
The petition says that by Nov. 9, however, Hadlock “still had not withdrawn or corrected” the audit.
She addressed those issues Nov. 12, by submitting a corrected audit — this time showing 21 errors affecting the 75 ballots, all owing to the faulty ballots that had been mixed into the election, the document adds.
Some Weston County residents filed complaints asking Gov. Mark Gordon to remove Hadlock from office.
She’d done a poor job but didn’t show the misconduct or malfeasance to vault the state to that level, Gordon countered.
Gordon did not consider the questionable post-election audit Hadlock had filed because the people qualified to bring the governor’s investigation complaints didn’t raise that point, his office later told lawmakers.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a vocal, frequent critic of Hadlock, had raised that complaint, but he wasn’t a qualified elector of Weston County, so he couldn’t ask for the governor’s investigation under the relevant law.
So Weston County residents filed another batch of complaints, this time including the post-election audit concern.
Gordon announced Jan. 7 that the broader body of evidence was sufficient to recommend Hadlock for removal and turned the question over to Attorney General Keith Kautz. He pointed to her failure to show for the legislative subpoena.
Kautz, along with four attorneys working in his office, filed a petition in February in Weston County District Court calling for Hadlock to be removed from her post.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
