FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Wyoming's attorney general is investigating how two U.S. Department of Justice officials monitored poll workers and observed voters in the state's most populous county during the Aug. 18 primary, a spokesperson for Republican Gov. Mark Gordon said Friday.
Gordon called the monitors' behavior “a bit aggressive” and “irregular" in an otherwise routine meeting to confirm the election results in the mostly rural and Republican state.
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“I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns. I don’t like that. I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either,” Gordon said at the meeting Wednesday.
Gordon spokesperson Amy Edmonds on Friday confirmed the investigation by Attorney General Keith Kautz, who was appointed by the governor.
Voting rights groups have raised concern about President Donald Trump's Justice Department shifting priorities away from enforcing civil rights laws with respect to voting. Trump instead has directed federal prosecutors to search for fraud in the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump has meanwhile been more assertive about influencing the department, including encouraging investigations of political opponents, in his second term.
Approaching the end of his second and final term in office, Gordon has publicly expressed little if any previous criticism of federal polices under Trump.
The monitoring happened in southeastern Wyoming's Laramie County, home to the state capital, Cheyenne.
The monitors arrived soon after polls opened at 7 a.m. on primary day and said they intended to interview voters while assessing compliance with federal civil rights and voting rights laws, Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee said in a statement.
Lee said her office didn't allow interviews to be conducted in polling places and denied the monitors permission to do so. The monitors questioned local officials about “the nature, length and timing of poll worker training," Lee said.
“Monitors requested training guides, asked how our new election equipment was acquired and wanted to examine our tabulators,” Lee said.
Wyoming law allows only election observation by certified poll watchers who monitor registration and turnout, Lee said.
“This was a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections,” Lee said in the statement.
She said she hadn't been notified the monitors would be in Laramie County. A Justice Department official in Washington told her the decision to send them was made on short notice and an email was sent to her but “may have gone to the wrong address," Lee said.
The Justice Department routinely sends monitors to observe polling places or election offices, but they are not supposed to interfere with voting or election administration.
The DOJ did not answer questions about the monitors Friday but referred to a primary day statement by Darin Smith, the U.S. attorney for Wyoming. He said monitors would be in the state “to ensure transparency, ballot security, and strict compliance with federal voting rights statutes.”
“Voters deserve absolute confidence that their ballots are secure and their voices are heard without interference,” Smith said in the statement. “We are working alongside local officials to ensure every lawful vote is protected.”
Appointed by the governor, Wyoming's attorney general works mainly in the service of the executive branch and is not politically independent as in other states.
No one, including Gordon, is asserting the monitoring influenced the election outcome, Edmonds said.
“It’s really a fact-finding mission just to sort of figure out exactly what did happen,” Edmonds said.
Trump's fraud claims about the 2020 election have been amplified by Wyoming's Republican secretary of state, Chuck Gray, who successfully ran in 2022 in part by showing a discredited documentary about those claims at campaign rallies across the state.
Gray told Gordon at the elections meeting that his office “got an email,” but that was all the communication it had with the Justice Department about the federal officials. Wyoming law allows election observers, Gray said.
“Certainly happy to visit with the attorney general,” Gray told the governor during the meeting. “Transparency is so important, and accountability.”
Gray is not seeking reelection as secretary of state and won the Republican nomination for Wyoming’s seat in the U.S. House during the primary.
