Governor won't allow citizens to remove elected official

Gov. Mark Gordon will not be directing the Wyoming Attorney General to commence any action against Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock for mishandling of the 2024 general election, according to a press release dated May 23. 

“Governor Mark Gordon has completed his review of verified complaints against Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock alleging acts of misconduct or malfeasance and requesting her removal from office,” the release says. “The Governor determined that while Clerk Hadlock made serious mistakes in the 2024 Weston County elections, her actions do not constitute “willful negligence” or “malicious intent”. Therefore, he will not direct the Attorney General to commence an action to initiate the clerk’s removal from office.”

Secretary of State Chuck Gray objected strongly to the governor’s decision.

“I am deeply troubled by Governor Gordon’s letter and for refusing to conduct a rigorous analysis of the facts of this case. I am particularly troubled by the Governor's lies by omission in completely ignoring our finding that Clerk Hadlock submitted a false post-election audit report with our office, which we discussed multiple times as the most serious finding in our investigation released in March,” Gray said in a statement released shortly after the governor’s letter was distributed on Friday.

In a letter accompanying the release, Gordon said that the people of the county decide who should fill county offices and “preempting that privilege without a clear and obvious showing of willfulness or intentional acts rising to the level of misconduct or malfeasance is not justifiable.” 

According to the release, Gordon emphasized that the electors’ complaint was taken seriously and thorough review was undertaken. This included the review of interviews and written materials submitted by multiple parties, as well as at least one interview of Hadlock, who was reportedly reluctant at first to acknowledge wrong-doing.

“In Clerk Hadlock’s interview she was not as forthcoming as I would have liked her to be. But when confronted directly about issues and problems raised by the complainants, she did not deny the matters,” Gordon said in his report. “It was disappointing that she did not appear to understand the significance of her mistakes but, again, her interview did not reveal any intent or willfulness on her part.”

Hadlock also denied that Weston County’s voting machines had delivered an inaccurate tally when both Gray and the News Letter Journal challenged the results the day after the election, but the governor did not think the errors or attempts to conceal them provided grounds for further legal action.

“This procedure and responsibility, in my view, should be considered only as an extreme measure, as replacing the will of the electorate with the opinions of a few contravenes the spirit of our constitutional republic and comes close to violating the letter of the Wyoming and United States’ Constitutions,” the governor wrote. “I believe this course of action must be a remedy of last resort, justified only by substantial actions that directly harm the county or citizens.” 

The release says that while the review revealed “multiple mistakes committed by Clerk Hadlock and her staff, no information or evidence was provided that supported any malicious intent on the part of Clerk Hadlock, or that she was trying to manipulate the results of the election.”

“[O]ne of the key elements to determining malfeasance is motive or willfulness, but in this incidence there is no indication that she did so with any intent to change or nullify the results of the votes of the people of Weston County,” the governor wrote.  

In essence,  Gordon claimed that the process worked, with any irregularities identified and corrected during a review by the canvassing board, according to the release. 

“It is clear that Clerk Hadlock made many mistakes and exhibited a high degree of unprofessional and perhaps slipshod management of the election,” the Governor wrote. “Still, the system set up to discover, correct, and properly count votes worked here.”

Gordon’s decision comes nearly six months after he acknowledged receipt of a citizens’ complaint regarding Hadlock’s actions as they related to mistakes she made in conducting the 2024 General Election. He announced in a Dec. 27 press release that he was investigating the matter. 

That complaint was filed after the Weston County Republican Party Central Committee voted unanimously to draft a letter to the governor asking for Hadlock’s removal, documenting the election issues and expressing a lack of confidence in Hadlock as clerk. Under Wyoming Statute 18-3-902, either qualified electors or the Board of Weston County Commissioners can request the governor to consider the removal of an elected official. 

“Whenever it appears to the governor on the verified complaint of qualified electors or the board of county commissioners of the county that the county officer is guilty of misconduct or malfeasance in office he may direct the attorney general to commence and prosecute an action in district court of the county in which the officer is an official asking for the removal of the officer,” the statute states. 

That means that if Gordon had allowed the action against Hadlock to proceed, it would have been up to a jury of Weston County citizens to decide on her removal. 

Election erros

As reported by the News Letter Journal after November’s general election, Hadlock used three different ballots for the House District 1 race, according to Secretary of State Chuck Gray, and the result was that most of the votes for Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, were not counted. 

According to Hadlock’s initial reports, Neiman received 166 votes in his uncontested race, with 1,289 undervotes counted. After a recount, it was reported that Neiman received 1,268 votes, with 166 undervotes. 

The recount also included the Weston County commissioners race. While the change was not as significant as it was in the HD1 race, Commissioner Ed Wagoner’s total increased by 62 votes, from 2,361 to 2,424 and Marty Ertman’s tally dropped by 62 votes from 2,225 to 2,163. 

The tallies in both races were corrected before they were certified, but Hadlock initially rebuffed suggestions that an error had occurred and Gray expressed concern about her conduct after others discovered the anomaly in reported results and alerted her.

Gray reported to the state canvassing board on Nov. 13 during their meeting — which was live-streamed on YouTube — that he planned to look further into what occurred in Weston County during the 2024 General Election, primarily regarding concerns over the post-election audit submitted by Hadlock and the machine testing she conducted before the election. 

Gray completed his own investigation into Hadlock’s actions, and released the findings of his efforts in March. He recommended the removal of Hadlock from office, and said it is clear there was “misconduct or malfeasance” in Hadlock’s conduct during the 2024 election cycle. 

In a letter he hand delivered to Gordon, Gray said that the standard of “misconduct or malfeasance in office has clearly been met,” subjecting Hadlock to removal proceeding in district court pursuant to Wyoming Statute 18-3-902. In the letter, Gray explained that despite concerns he had voiced to the Weston County Clerk over the results she reported for the general election — specifically the number of votes received by Rep. Neiman — Hadlock produced a perfect post-election audit that was filed with the Secretary of State’s Office on Nov. 6.

“Clerk Hadlock’s conduct shows a pattern of gross incompetence and even wilful neglect of her duties as the chief election officer of Weston County,” Gray said in a press conference. “Through her errors with the 2024 primary and general election, Clerk Hadlock has shown again that repeated dereliction of those duties. Most importantly, and I want to emphasize this, we must highlight (that) Clerk Hadlock’s conduct in filing a false post-election audit in contravention to Wyoming law indicated a repeated and heightened level of misconduct.” 

Gray further claimed that the clerk’s submission of a false post-election audit to his office is a violation of Wyoming Statute 6-54-308 and constitutes a felony crime. He argued there are only two reasonable explanations for the submission of a false post-election audit: One, Hadlock conducted the audit, found the errors and chose to assert that no errors had been found; or two, that she claimed to hold a post-election audit that was never actually conducted. 

“Which raises concerns if Hadlock had ever conducted a post-election audit,” he said.

Gordon did not address Gray’s concerns about the post-election audit directly, but suggested the belief that any wrong-doing on Hadlock’s part was unintended and simply the result of incompetence.

“My decision here is not an easy one as there are multiple mistakes committed by Clerk Hadlock and her staff,” the governor wrote. “Clearly, Clerk Hadlock’s work and that of some of her staff was sloppy and failed to pay sufficient attention to the details necessary to ensure that there were no mistakes in the election process or that the initial results were accurate.” 

He expressed dissatisfaction with Gordon’s decision to shield Hadlock from legal action, and argued that she demonstrated intent in filing a false audit report.

“The Weston County Clerk’s submittal of a false post-election audit report on November 6, 2024 does appear to be a willful violation of the code, as revealed by the Weston County Canvassing Board meeting on November 8, 2024, as well as the subsequent, properly-performed audit, which confirmed that there were 21 of 75 ballots with a discrepancy, in direct contravention to the initial post-election audit results submitted to our office. This false post-election audit occurred after we had expressed concerns about the anomalies. Our investigation came to the conclusion there are only two reasonable explanations for the false submission of this audit, absent another explanation provided by the Weston County Clerk, the Governor, or any relevant actors, which was not even discussed. Our investigation found that one possibility is that Clerk Hadlock conducted her audit, finding errors in the election and then choosing to falsely assert that no errors had been found. The investigation found that the second reasonable possibility is that no audit was conducted at all. Either one of those possibilities would suggest that she attempted to hide the problems with the conduct of the 2024 General Election,” Gray said in the statement distributed by his office.

The governor acknowledged multiple failures on the part of Hadlock, but did not agree with the Secretary of State on Hadlock’s intent when providing the rationale he used to deny the request from Gray and the Weston County Republican Party to allow legal proceedings to determine Hadlock’s guilt.

“Certainly, Clerk Hadlock’s actions would constitute simple negligence but we must account for the fact that people will make mistakes. I do not believe, however, that her actions rise to the level of gross negligence nor ‘willful negligence’ as stated by the Secretary of State,” the governor wrote in the letter announcing his decision. “Gross negligence requires that a person is indifferent and has little regard for the results of his or her action. Clerk Hadlock was not indifferent — incompetent perhaps — but certainly not indifferent. She tried to conduct the election properly. Unfortunately, she was poorly equipped and trained to perform the duties of her job and failed to pay attention to detail and plan her schedule to meet the necessary requirements.” 

Gray was not satisfied with this explanation.

“The Governor’s omission of discussing the false post-election audit in his decision is inherently problematic,” the Secretary of State asserted. “Gordon has gotten used to the media refusing to cover these lies of omission and this is another example of those lies of omission. I’m deeply troubled that Governor Gordon refused to even acknowledge key parts of the case.” 

In addition to violations associated with the post-election audit, Gray had also outlined violations of the Wyoming Statute regarding machine testing, proper sealing and the custody of voting equipment and ballots, as well as failures in the training of election workers.