A county clerk whose conduct in the 2024 election cycle is under investigation by Wyoming lawmakers opted not to appear before them on Sept. 29 despite receiving a subpoena to do so, citing a scheduling conflict.
Electeds on the Weston County Clerk 2024 General Election Subcommittee took the rare step of subpoenaing Clerk Becky Hadlock to testify on ballot misprints in three 2024 races, which led to hand recounts.
Hadlock sent the subcommittee a letter on Sept. 25 in which she told lawmakers she would ask members of the county’s hand count committee to attend and give testimony.
“My scheduling conflict was confirmed multiple times,” she wrote in the letter. “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.”
She did not respond to a request for comment from Wyoming Public Radio by press time.
In Wyoming, failing to heed the call of a subpoena can mean a fine of up to $100 and up to six months in county jail. Committees seldom use their subpoena power, generally opting to invite persons of interest first and use legal maneuvers if they decline, according to Legislative Service Office (LSO) staff attorney Josh Anderson in July.
The last time a committee used a subpoena was in 2013, during an investigation into then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill, sources close to the state Legislature say.
The subcommittee met to hear testimony to contribute to its findings of fact report on what changes might be needed to Wyoming’s election laws.
In December 2024, nine qualified electors and local Republican Party officials in Weston County submitted a verified complaint to the governor seeking Hadlock’s removal for misconduct and malfeasance in office.
There were four specific actions of Hadlock’s outlined in the complaint, including mishandling election ballots by ordering and using multiple ballot versions in the general election.
At the meeting, state leaders advocated for a variety of policy changes that might prevent what happened in Weston County from occurring again.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray spoke about his support of three election overhaul bills in the last session that died, including a bill to expand the use of hand count audits of elections sponsored by Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (R-Wheatland), a bill allowing for hand count audits of random precincts sponsored by Rep. Ann Lucas (R-Cheyenne), and a ban on voting equipment sponsored by Rep. Scott Smith (R-Lingle).
All of the sponsors are members or endorsees of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
House Speaker and state Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Neiman (R-Hulett) was a candidate running unopposed in one of the three races at question.
“The people of Wyoming want change in their elections, I believe,” said Neiman. “For myself, I want to see legislation just like what the good secretary of state shared, brought back again and brought to the body. I think we need to have that conversation and sit down and get something done.”
In a National Public Affairs poll of 497 likely general election voters in Wyoming conducted for the state Freedom Caucus ahead of the November election, 10% of respondents listed “Ensuring election integrity” as their top issue.
In March, Gray released a report on Weston County’s election errors and called for Hadlock’s removal.
He highlighted an erroneous post-election audit sent by Hadlock to the State Canvassing Board, which is made up of the governor and other executive branch officials.
But Gov. Mark Gordon declined to refer the case to the state attorney general’s office for prosecution despite Hadlock’s “serious mistakes.”
Betsy Anderson, an attorney for the governor, told the subcommittee the complaint that kicked off Gordon’s investigation never mentioned a post-election audit.
“Nor did anyone mention the post-election audit in any of our interviews,” said Anderson.
Ann Slagle, an election judge in Weston County who worked on the hand count committee, testified that her community’s views on and reactions to what Hadlock did during the 2024 general election aren’t uniform.
“She has made mistakes, and people do know it,” said Slagle, a state committeewoman for the Weston County GOP. “So that’s on one side. On the other side, people … they’re like, ‘She’s being picked on.’ There’s this divide in the community. There're some people that don't trust her, and there're some people that do.”
Some county clerks previously told WPR that in general, hand counts can have more errors than those done by voting equipment.
Journalists and editors at the News Letter Journal newspaper in Newcastle spoke candidly about their views on Hadlock and her conduct.
“I think that it turned to malice directly afterwards when Hadlock created falsehoods and spread misinterpretations of what happened as a way to try and cover up her mistakes,” testified reporter and editor Alexis Barker. “And this leads directly into filing a false audit with the secretary of state's office.”
Barker said that while Gordon didn’t speak to members of her newspaper during his investigation, the News Letter Journal “worked directly with Secretary of State Chuck Gray since the beginning.”
“We were some of the phone calls he was making the day after,” she said. “We worked very hand in hand with him, and he did use some of our news reporting and such in his findings.”
Bob Bonnar, the newspaper’s editor in chief and publisher, spoke next.
“The post-election audit and the falsification of that is also malicious, and I don't know how anybody can argue that it wasn't,” said Bonnar, a former president of the Wyoming Press Association.
He continued: “I just have to testify that I don't trust elections anymore, and I'm not someone who distrusted them.”
Some measures discussed during the meeting, like the bill to add more hand count audits of elections, are under consideration by the interim Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee.
The committee is expected to vote on those draft bills at its next meeting on Nov. 3 in Cheyenne.
The subcommittee will meet again virtually on Oct. 6 and work towards drafting a report on the Weston County incident.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
