Wyoming's Governor and Laramie County Clerk Say DOJ's Primary-Day Monitors Were Aggressive and Exceeded Their Authority

At a state canvassing board meeting on Wednesday, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said of the DOJ monitors sent for the state’s primary: “It sounded like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive.” Their “behavior seemed to exceed what the authority that Congress had given them was,” he said, and “I have asked the attorney general to start looking into” the visits, NBC News reported. He added: “I’m not saying anything went wrong or anything else, and I certainly think the conduct of this election was phenomenal.”

DOJ had said in an “Aug. 18” statement that it was sending “two attorneys with its Civil Rights Division to Laramie County.” Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee called the deployment “a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections.” NBC reported that the monitors “requested training guides, asked how our new election equipment was acquired, and wanted to examine our tabulators,” and that Lee “denied requests by the monitors to interview voters.”