CASPER—Wyoming lawmakers will pursue criminal charges against Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock for allegedly defying a subpoena and failing to appear Monday at a subcommittee meeting.
“This is a big violation,” Sen. Dan Laursen, R-Powell, said as the Wyoming Legislature’s Weston County Clerk 2024 General Election Subcommittee met Monday morning in Casper.
The violation is a misdemeanor. If convicted, Hadlock could be fined up to $100 and sentenced to county jail for no more than six months.
The Joint Management Audit Committee’s chair, Rep. Chris Knapp of Gillette, subpoenaed Hadlock to appear and testify at Monday’s meeting. But the clerk informed lawmakers via letter that she would not attend due to a scheduling conflict, Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, said at the meeting. Rodriguez-Williams confirmed to WyoFile that the lawmakers would pursue criminal charges against Hadlock due to her failure to appear.
In the 2024 general election, Hadlock caused an initial ballot miscount in her county’s results after using the wrong ballots. Those results showed Rep. Chip Neiman received 166 votes for House District 1, while 1,289 left that part of the ballot blank, also known as an undervote. That count caught Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s attention. His office intervened and ultimately a hand count was conducted.
That did not resolve the issue, however, for several Weston County voters who asked the Wyoming State Canvassing Board not to certify the results of the election.
“I would like to state that if you certify this election, knowing that one county found flipped votes, and no other counties have been checked by hand, that you’re damaging the integrity of Wyoming,” Weston County resident Susan Love told the board at the time.
The board unanimously voted to certify the results. However, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who chairs the board, said his office planned “a more full analysis evaluating [the clerk’s] conduct.”
The following month, eight Weston County voters filed a formal complaint with Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, alleging Hadlock committed “acts of misconduct and malfeasance.”
Altogether, Hadlock faced accusations that she mishandled election ballots by ordering and using multiple ballot versions in the general election; improperly tested voting machines during the primary and general elections; used incorrect ballots in the general election, which necessitated hand recounts; and caused a significant undercount of votes.
As laid out by state law, Gordon was not tasked with deciding whether to unilaterally remove Hadlock from office. Rather, he was required to determine whether to recommend that the attorney general seek the clerk’s removal in district court.
“Although I recognize that Clerk Hadlock made many serious mistakes in the 2024 Weston County elections, her actions do not rise to the level of misconduct or malfeasance, as I understand the meaning of those terms in this situation,” Gordon wrote in his decision. “I do not believe there is a clear path to proving guilt.”
Ahead of Gordon’s decision, Gray released the results of his office’s own investigation and recommended that Hadlock be removed from office.
“Most importantly,” Gray wrote, “we must highlight that Clerk Hadlock’s conduct in filing a false post-election audit in contravention to Wyoming law indicates a repeated and heightened level of misconduct.”
Hadlock did not respond to WyoFile’s request for comment by publishing time.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct that Hadlock did not respond to WyoFile’s request for comment by publishing time. —Ed.
I watched the Legislative Committee meeting. There is a push by some to eliminate voting machines altogether and go to hand counting. What happened in Weston County demonstrate that the problems with machine counting are that human error or malfeasance are possible. The same problems exist with hand counting. We must honestly acknowledge the weaknesses in our voting systems, and work to improve auditing and testing procedures.
Correct Lisa, thank you. One major issue highlighted in the Subcommittee meeting is that the county clerk may have too much single-handed power across the full spectrum of the county election. We need more checks and balances both to protect our clerks and also better catch issues. The clerks have quite an overloaded plate it appears.
The Weston county clerk really caused a permanent black eye to the clerk position when it appears she most likely pencil-whipped the post-election audit, thus didn’t show up to the Subcommittee, even after being formally subpoenaed.
Post-election audit; the Wyo SOS reviews each county’s election results, selects a specific number of ballots to be reviewed and then has each clerk pull those exact ballot images in electronic form and compare what the machine recorded for each vote (the cast vote record – CVR) with each electronic ballot image.
21 times when the ballot image was reviewed (did the Weston clerk review?) and compared to the CVR how the machine recorded each vote for Nieman, the clerk legally and formally declared the CVR and image matched, when they clearly didn’t. The image showed the bullet filled in for Nieman, but the CVR showed no vote recorded, thus an undervote. 21 times this happened. Did the clerk really perform the legally required audit? That’s the big question. Clerks pencil whipping audits, or running illegal pre-election tests, or other issues all need identification and addressing before the ’26 elections.
There’re lots of positives from all this mess. I’m confident Wyo elections will come out even stronger, as will our great clerks. Sure, there are a wide range of solutions the Legislature is looking into. I’m confident a balanced set of improvements is the most likely and best solution we’ll see pass the muster.
Governor Gordon has looked into this, and I feel he is calm, mature, informed and understanding. I think Mr. Gray has shown he is quite the opposite. Mr. Gray has been on his tippy toes, screaming voter fraud in Wyoming when there isn’t any to speak of And he’s going after this Weston County clerk as a sacrificial lamb to somehow prove he is right there’s a big conspiracy in voting fraud in Wyoming. How ridiculous leave this gal alone everyone makes mistakes just keep an eye on her. I think you’ll find she’s very honest. I do recall when they were and I mean Republicans after our clerk in Laramie County, who has been doing a fantastic job and maybe made a little mistake, but it had no effect on the election at all. I wish they would knock it off with all this false accusations of voter fraud in Wyoming.
Thank You for this comment on Gov Gordon v. Chuck Gray and his plans to be Governor in the next election based on his claims of voting fraud in Wyoming. Gordon is trying to neutralize Gray’s ridiculous claims which will not benefit our state or the people who live here. I am in agreement with you on this issue.
“The people in my district have almost zero faith in our elections … we’re talking about the most treasured, valuable, precious thing we as Americans hold dear, and that is the ability to know that our vote has been counted and it’s been accorded to the person we wanted it accorded to.
Everything we do as Americans hinges on our ability to vote and to know that our vote counts … Quite frankly, I’m happy this has happened because it obviously exposes the problems in our systems, that we can already see that our vote can disappear.”
Representative Chip Neiman – Weston / Crook counties
testimony during 9/29/25 Weston County Clerk Subcommittee meeting