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Page B1From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 3 September 2026

GOP governor calls DOJ election monitors 'aggressive'; the department had already announced 1,000 more the week before.

By SalStaff Writer

As it ran on the front

Start with the calendar, because the calendar is the whole con. On a Wednesday at the end of August, a Republican governor stands up at his own state's canvassing board meeting and says the federal election monitors he got for the primary were "a bit aggressive," and that their behavior "seemed to exceed what the authority that Congress had given them was." That's Mark Gordon. That's Wyoming.

Now walk down the hall to the county clerk. Debra Lee, Laramie County, says the federal people started asking about her tabulators and the training guides for her poll workers while the voting was still going on. She wouldn't let them interview voters. Some of the questions, she said, were "outside the scope of federal voting rights laws." And how did she find out they were coming? A DOJ official in Washington told her the decision to send monitors to Wyoming was made on short notice, and an email had been sent to her, but it may have gone to the wrong address. The department that wants a look at your tabulator couldn't route its own email.…

…(cont) And the complaint slowed nothing down, because the number was already out. The week before the governor spoke, the department had said a thousand poll monitors would go out for the midterms. The U.S. attorney for Wyoming had a statement ready about how voters deserve "absolute confidence" that their voices are heard "without interference." The board minutes say he was informed of the governor's concerns. This week the Civil Rights Division's plan is still a thousand for November, and a DOJ official told The Federalist it "could be the largest in DOJ history." For scale: 714 monitors in 2024, across 86 jurisdictions in 27 states. About 300 in 2022. Now a thousand. The assistant attorney general's explanation is that "the more eyes we have on elections, in my opinion, the better because the more people will be confident in those elections."

Read "confident" the way a bartender reads "I'm fine to drive." You don't measure it going in. They tell you you'll have it after. A Republican governor told the department its people went past what Congress allowed, and the department's answer was the same number it had the week before, with a press release about confidence on top. The machine doesn't shrink when you complain about it. It learns your address, or in Laramie County, somebody else's.

Wyoming complained to the U.S. attorney, and the minutes say he was informed. The count for November is still a thousand.

“Read the dates, not the press release. Washington announces a thousand monitors for November, and the week after, a Republican governor says the ones he already had were asking his county clerk about her tabulators. The clerk found out they were coming from a DOJ email that went to the wrong address. That's not a program that answers complaints, that's a program that learns addresses, and it already had the next thousand in the envelope.”
Sal
“Look, the Civil Rights Division has broad statutory authority to monitor elections, that's not new, that's the law, and a thousand monitors across a country this size is a modest ratio per polling site. I did not do the math per polling site. As for Wyoming, a county clerk saying the questions were 'outside the scope of federal voting rights laws' is a clerk's opinion, and the email going to the wrong address is a mail problem, not a monitoring problem. Did I just say the department didn't have the clerk's address? Things get misrouted. That's a postal matter.”
Chip

The receipts

This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.