Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon expressed concerns on August 27, 2026, regarding the conduct of election observers from the U.S. Justice Department during the state's primaries the previous week. Gordon described the observers' behavior as 'aggressive' and 'irregular' during a state canvassing board meeting. He stated, 'It sounded like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive,' and requested that the attorney general investigate the nature of the visits. Gordon noted that state and local officials had not been informed in advance of the DOJ's plans. He clarified that he was not objecting to the observers but felt their behavior exceeded the authority granted by Congress.
Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee, a Republican, also criticized the DOJ monitors, calling their actions 'a poorly managed exercise' that showed 'complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections.' Lee mentioned that after learning of the monitors' presence, she spoke with a DOJ official who indicated that the decision to deploy monitors was made on short notice, and an email had been sent to her, possibly to the wrong address. She claimed the monitors' inquiries were 'outside the scope of federal voting rights laws' and denied their requests to interview voters.
In response to inquiries, the DOJ referred to a statement from Darin Smith, the U.S. attorney for Wyoming, which emphasized the importance of voter confidence in the security of their ballots. The DOJ had announced on August 18 that it would send two attorneys from its civil rights division to Laramie County for election monitoring. The department has deployed over 80 election monitors across seven states during this year's primaries, a practice that is not unusual. The DOJ noted it had sent monitors to nine states during the 2022 midterms. The criticism from Gordon and Lee is notable, as many Republican officials have typically supported former President Trump's 'election integrity' agenda.