Gray's Election Bill Dies Amid Clash Over Accountability, 'Personality Conflicts'
CHEYENNE — Secretary of State Chuck Gray and Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander clashed Monday over whether a bill born from a prolonged election controversy was a necessary reform or a product of personal politics — and Case had the votes to kill it.
House Bill 86, which would have let the Secretary of State file formal complaints with the governor seeking the removal of county clerks for election code violations, died 3-2 in the Senate Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee that Case chairs.
Gray presented a detailed timeline of what he called a 15-month odyssey to hold Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock accountable after she submitted what he described as a false post-election audit following the troubled 2024 general election. He told the committee the bill would close a gap that left his office with intimate knowledge of misconduct but no standing to act on it.
Case wasn’t buying it. He told the committee the bill was entangled in a feud between the state’s top elected officials and that the timing was wrong.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/02/23/grays-election-bill-dies-amid-clash-over-accountability-personality-conflicts/