Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon expressed concern over how election observers from the U.S. Justice Department observed the state’s primaries during a state canvassing board meeting on Aug. 27. The governor described the monitors' conduct as irregular and announced he had directed the state attorney general to investigate the nature of their visits.

Gordon noted that state and local officials had not been told ahead of time of the DOJ’s plans to deploy personnel to Laramie County. "It sounded like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive," Gordon said regarding the interactions between federal attorneys and local election staff. He added that the lack of prior coordination contributed to the unusual circumstances surrounding the monitoring effort.

"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," he said. Despite his concerns about the observers' methods, the governor affirmed the integrity of the voting process itself. "I’m not saying anything went wrong or anything else, and I certainly think the conduct of this election was phenomenal," he said.

Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee criticized the conduct of the DOJ monitors as "a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections." Lee stated that the monitors’ questions were outside the scope of federal voting rights laws and included requests for training guides and examinations of tabulators. She also denied requests by the monitors to interview voters and noted that an email regarding the monitors may have been sent to the wrong address.

The DOJ stated on Aug. 18 that it would send two attorneys from its civil rights division to Laramie County for election monitoring. Lee stated that a DOJ official informed her the decision to deploy monitors to Wyoming was made on short notice. The U.S. Justice Department is a United States federal executive department responsible for enforcing federal laws, while the Wyoming Gov serves as the head of state and of government of the U.S. state of Wyoming.