Wyoming's Republican governor has raised concerns about what he described as "aggressive" and "irregular" conduct by U.S. Department of Justice officials who observed the state's recent primary elections, telling the state canvassing board that he has asked the attorney general to look into the visits.

Gov. Mark Gordon spoke out Wednesday in Cheyenne as the state canvassing board met to certify the results of Wyoming's primary elections, according to the local news outlet WyoFile. The conduct of the federal observers also prompted concern from Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee.

"To my knowledge, the U.S. Attorney was unaware of [the observers' presence]," Gordon said. "And it sounded like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive." He added: "It just was irregular, and I have asked the attorney general to start looking into, you know, kind of the nature of the visits and all that sort of stuff."

As WyoFile reported, federal election observers are not new to Wyoming or to other states across the country, where the department's monitors traditionally focus on compliance with a defined set of statutes — the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the National Voter Registration Act, the law governing military and overseas ballots, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The legal footing for federal observation has narrowed over the past decade: the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder dismantled much of the oversight framework that governed federal observers, and in 2024 a federal judge in Texas ruled that the department could not send observers under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 without a court order. The Trump administration, however, says it is ramping up those efforts and planning to dispatch about 1,000 staff members across the country in November, when voters will decide who controls Congress. The monitoring follows the Justice Department's efforts to obtain states' voter data, which it successfully procured from Wyoming in 2025 with the assistance of Secretary of State Chuck Gray.

Last week, though, local and state officials were not made aware of the federal observers, Gordon said at Wednesday's meeting, pointing to the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, the Wyoming Attorney General and the Laramie County Clerk's Office as being out of the loop. Gray pushed back against the governor's assertion, saying announcements were made.

"Two Department of Justice attorneys were dispatched to Laramie County as part of a 'monitoring initiative,'" read a department press release published on Aug. 18, Wyoming's primary election day. "This monitoring initiative is aimed at promoting transparency and an open flow of communication between poll observers and election monitors." The same release covered monitoring of Florida's primary elections.

WyoFile reports that Gordon said he was not "objecting to the observers," but that "their behavior seemed to exceed what the authority that Congress had given them was." That behavior, he said, is why he has asked the attorney general to "examine that."

"I'm not saying anything went wrong or anything else, and I certainly think the conduct of this election was phenomenal," Gordon added. "I feel very strongly about federal government coming in and taking our guns. I don't like that. And I don't like federal government coming in and taking our votes either."

Lee, the chief election officer for Wyoming's most populous county, which includes Cheyenne, was more alarmed by the federal observers' actions. "Two individuals, identifying themselves as DOJ election monitors, informed our poll worker that they were here to monitor Wyoming's Primary Elections. They did not offer their credentials until I requested they do so," she said in a statement.

The monitors also asked questions that seemed "outside the scope of federal voting rights laws," Lee said. "They included questions about the nature, length, and timing of poll worker training. Monitors requested training guides, asked how our new election equipment was acquired, and wanted to examine our tabulators."

When she learned that the monitors also intended to interview voters "to assess compliance with federal civil rights and voting rights law," she refused. "We do not allow interviews to be conducted in polling places," Lee explained. "This was a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections."

The immediate next step sits with the Wyoming attorney general's office, which Gordon has asked to examine the nature of the visits. Beyond that lies November, when the administration's planned deployment of about 1,000 staff is scheduled to fan out across the country's polling places.