Back in 2024, Weston County’s election clerk was accused of misconduct in the general election. Since then, Becky Hadlock faced criminal and civil charges, as well as investigations by the secretary of state and governor’s office. She ultimately resigned in early April. A new clerk was appointed on Thursday. Wyoming Public Radio’s Kamila Kudelska spoke with Alexis Barker the day after. She’s an editor in chief at the News Letter Journal, which has covered this topic extensively.
Editor’s Note: This transcript was edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Kamila Kudelska: Let's start with the most recent news. A new county clerk was appointed. Who is it?
Alexis Barker: That's going to be James Michael Tooman. He's a longtime resident of Newcastle in Weston County. I believe he said he's been involved in elections for 17 years.
He has a lot of experience in nuclear technology, working with the federal government. Throughout his interview, he's talking about things that he could do to improve the clerk's office. A lot of it was the availability of information to people and the transparency, like, everything that's available to the public should be available to the public. They shouldn't have to come look for it.
KK: Am I understanding correctly that he was an election judge?
AB: Yes, an election judge and I believe he attended [voting machine] testings and things like that. But he's always been very political and involved in government. When he came to Weston County, that was what him and his wife jumped into, was the Republican Party and working with the elections and being active in the Republican Party.
KK: So how was he chosen, if not through an election?
AB: It started with the resignation of the county clerk. It was over a month back now. Whoever was filling the seat, it's the same party that they belong to that will fill that seat.
The GOP picks three candidates to then go to the [Weston County] commissioners, and then the commissioners are responsible – shall according to statute – pick from those three, the then acting clerk or whoever until the next election.
[But] because the commissioners, when they interviewed these three individuals, failed to choose one of those three candidates, several Weston County residents filed petitions with the court and as well as election complaints against the commissioners for failing to do their statutory job to appoint this position.
Then once that was all filed, yesterday [District Court] Judge Matthew Castano, he sat down and visited with the four individuals that had petitioned the court. That was the three candidates that the GOP had picked, plus the acting interim clerk, who was not chosen by the GOP to go on that list of three to the commissioners, which came out afterwards. That is why the commissioners failed to pick one of those three, is they were upset that the acting clerk was not on that list of people.
They were adamant that she was the most qualified, and that because they didn't get the opportunity to consider her, they essentially kicked it to the judge, and the judge had that responsibility yesterday. He asked them all the same questions and gave them the same opportunity.
KK: Like you mentioned, this all started when the former county clerk, Becky Hadlock, resigned in April. What prompted her to resign?
AB: She was finally arrested on two separate felony charges related to election integrity issues and the filing of a false report with the secretary of state for her election audit, which was one of the first things that triggered people wanting her removed from office. If she would've made amends for the mistake with the election, it would've never went that far. But it just kept going. It was a snowball that turned into a snowman really quick.
KK: It started with the general election in 2024, and like you mentioned, it was an issue with the ballots.
AB: Yes. She ended up having three separate copies of the same ballot because there were issues with the first two copies with the lining. The lines were off, there were mistakes on the ballot, so then they were reordered. Instead of getting rid of those original copies once the new ones came in, she had for some reason shoved them all into the ballot bag.
The election machines are only coded to read one set of ballots. So when those ballots that were misaligned went through, it marked all of those counts as undervotes because it didn't read those votes correctly. It didn't read the proper lines. Rep. and Speaker of the House Chip Nieman ended up having just over 100 actual votes and over 1,200 undervotes, which we caught election night. Secretary of State Chuck Gray caught it as well.
[We] reached out to her that evening [and] we've discussed it with Becky. She was defiant with us as well, and tried to play it off as not being an issue.
Then there's the post-election audit, which is what helped not only concrete[ly] confirm the issue, but also where it was determined that Becky had tried to cover it up, in a sense. She either didn't conduct the post-election audit at all, which is statutorily required, or she would have had to read 21 ballots as being correct when they were not correct.
What had happened is she submitted the report to Chuck Gray saying, "Okay, all 75 ballots in this list that I had to pull were accurate and correct." Well, once he made her redo that post-election audit, it turned out that 21 of those same ballots were not correct
So they did a hand count. The hand count determined that not only the Chip Neiman race was off, but also the Weston County commissioner's race was off.
KK: To clarify, did the ballot mistakes affect the outcome of any races?
AB: No, none of the outcomes were affected. It was simply, to people, an integrity issue.
Then there was the petitions filed for removal, the investigations from the governor. Originally, the governor said that Becky Hadlock would not be removed. Then once they submitted the information on the post-election audit and the discrepancies in that, Gov. Mark Gordon came back and said, "Okay, there was some maliciousness potentially there. The attorney general is going to now consider this," and he then recommended her for the removal process.
KK: Right. And what happened to all the charges and investigations against her?
AB: She pled guilty to misdemeanor charges. Those two felony charges, one was dismissed, one was dropped to a misdemeanor, and we're just waiting on a judge to accept the plea deal, which will, I believe, [be] no jail time, $500 fine.
She was looking at over $5,000 in fines and jail time with the two felonies, I believe up to six months.
KK: You've mentioned the citizens were worried. The citizens didn't like the way that Hadlock was reacting to this. Are they worried about election integrity coming up in 2026?
AB: Those people that were worried before, I think with the appointment of Michael Tooman are not anymore. I think their big concern with Amber Green became her connection to Hadlock in that office.
KK: That's the interim county clerk?
AB: The acting clerk that was not selected. There was a lot of concern that Green was trained by Hadlock. That maybe an outside individual might bring some insight and some extra eyes to just assure people that this election wasn't ran in the same way as the last one.
