Trump’s electoral intimidation rollout is well underway. During Wyoming’s primary, two DOJ officials showed up at Laramie County polling places without notifying state or local election officials. They asked questions poll workers say went well beyond their legal authority, and they tried to examine vote tabulators and interview voters inside polling places.
WyoFile reports:
The chief election officer for Wyoming’s most populous county, Clerk Lee … voiced concern about the DOJ’s presence in the Laramie County polling places she oversees.
“Two individuals, identifying themselves as DOJ election monitors, informed our poll worker that they were here to monitor Wyoming’s Primary Elections,” Lee said. … “They did not offer their credentials until I requested they do so.” …
The monitors arrived at a busy time and asked questions, according to Lee, that appeared “outside the scope of federal voting rights laws. 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 planned to interview voters “to assess compliance with federal civil rights and voting rights law,” she denied that request. “We do not allow interviews to be conducted in polling places,” Lee said. “This was a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections,” her statement concluded.
Gov. Mark Gordon—a Republican certainly not known for reflexive skepticism of Trump’s DOJ—went further, saying the observers’ conduct “seemed to exceed” the authority Congress gave them and that he’s asked the state attorney general to look into it. Even Wyoming’s own U.S. Attorney reportedly wasn’t looped in ahead of time.
If this is the dry run for the 1,000-monitor midterm rollout, the DOJ’s claim that this is all about “promoting transparency” is already being undermined.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.