Unnerved red state blindsided by feds at the polls as experts fear a darker scenario looms

Federal agents turned up unannounced at polling places in a state Trump carried by his widest margin in 2024, and local officials and election experts warn the confrontation could previewfederal interference in November, The Dispatch warns.

On Aug. 18, Wyoming's primary day, two Justice Department election observers visited six of seven polling locations in Laramie County, the state's most populous. County Clerk Debra Lee said the monitors wanted to interview voters and examine the county's vote-counting machines, both of which her office refused, citing state law that limits who may observe elections. Lee said she was never notified in advance, and a DOJ official told her a heads-up email may have gone to the wrong address.

“We do not allow interviews to be conducted in polling places, so this was denied,” Lee said in a statement, according to The Dispatch.

“This was a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections,” Lee added in her fiery statement.

Republican Gov. Mark Gordon called the agents' conduct aggressive and irregular and asked the state attorney general to investigate.

"I don't like the federal government coming in and taking our votes," Gordon said.

The Justice Department disputed that account, however, with Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon claiming the observers asked only routine questions about assistance for visually impaired voters and provisional ballots, and never sought to inspect tabulators. She said the department considers monitoring nonpartisan and plans to send observers to all 50 states in November.

Experts were unsettled by the episode.

Stephen Richer, a former Republican election official in Arizona, called the observers' behavior "highly irregular" and credited local officials for pushing back. Both Richer and Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller said their deeper concern is a scenario they consider unlikely but not impossible: federal agents seizing ballots before they are counted. In January, the FBI seized 2020 ballots from Georgia's Fulton County, a longtime target of Trump's false fraud claims.