Mark Gordon

I was like, "Let me check out one of these meetups and write about it." And, um, there happened to be one, like, up the street and from, you know, The Stranger offices for this guy Howard Dean.

He was the unknown governor of Vermont, and he had this, you know, ambition to run for President of United States.

This is in, like, April of 2003, so it's like 20 months before the presidential election.

So I go to this thing.

Let me ask about your thoughts about one of those candidates, um, in a slightly long, roundabout way by starting with this, um, story this week, or when was it? I don't know.

Recently.

A Wyoming Republican governor, Mark Gordon, saying two officials with the Trump administration, Department of Justice, show up unannounced at a polling station demanding to interview voters.

They want to inspect polling machines, and they're denied, but people are, are asking, like, "What the fuck is going on here?" The governor's calling for an investigation.

But it's also been concerning because we haven't seen a whole lot of online discourse or discourse in other spaces that talks about what the people who are currently in positions of power, what they are doing in order to keep the election safe.

And so it was really, really encouraging when Governor Wes Moore out of the great state of Maryland had this to say about the behind the scenes work that governors are from both parties, the Democratic and the Republican parties, the work that they are doing to prepare for the potential threats.

Let's take a listen.

A lot of us are worried.

And that is why for months we have actually been working together as governors and as statewide elected officials to remind each other of our power and remind each other of our ability and the levers that we do uniquely have.

Because what we want people to remember is this, is that the power of the vote does not fall with the president of the United States.

It falls with our states.

And so this is something that we take very seriously within our state.

She was one of a few dozen Jacksonites who attended a recent letter-writing event with the Wyoming Outdoor Council, Wyoming Wilderness Association, and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

Governor Mark Gordon and Wyoming's lone U.S. Representative Harriet Hageman and other proponents say cutting the rule will help with fighting wildfires.

However, scientists dispute that.

I'm Jenna McMurtry, KHOL News.

So we have a preview here of why people are concerned.

You look at Republican controlled Wyoming Republican Governor Mark Gordon complained about what he called aggressive and irregular behavior by federal election monitors during their primary.

And the Republican county clerk said monitors were asking to examine voting equipment.

They don't have the right to do that.

Wayfair Every style every home Hey before your Q3 call I’ve got the campaign brief ready Built from last quarter’s data and the competitive landscape Great Did you include the differentiation angle the CMO asked for Already in there Three angles no competitor’s using right now Just need your approval Approved Thanks Oh agents Where would we be without you Hmm Somewhere with a lot more tabs open Create your first Monday agent in minutes at monday.com

And this just goes again back to the last article that we read where this administration is trying to paint transgender people in a violent light For this they are trying to justify taking away their rights And just recently Donald Trump was quoted as saying something like "If the GOP wins the midterms That will allow them to end transgenderism." That is highly genocidal speech And I think people are very justifiably concerned with this stage that we're in and the direction that we're headed around LGBTQ folk in general All right let's talk about elections for a bit There's a video I'm gonna post to on CBS News Texas where James Talarico says nothing terrifies them m-more than people who show up to vote and people who show up to hold elected officials accountable It's why they arrested people This in uh reference to uh Tarrant County Texas Judge Tim O'Hare is surgically cutting voting locations in minority and pool areas to help MAGA A summary of the article says commissioners were ready to cut nearly half of voting locations last time But everyone showed up in opposition Even though a lot of the individual cut sites were smaller together those cut sites still accounted for almost forty percent of everyone who voted on Election Day in twenty twenty two That's not a rounding error That's a huge percentage of the county's election day voters whose specific polling places no longer exist After massive backlash they're trying to negotiate by cutting thirty percent of polling locations even though population and voter registrations are massively higher this election cycle The Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five is our strongest protection against this but it has been repeatedly gutted recently by the Supreme Court They sided with Abbott to racially gerrymander even after the Texas maps were found to be racial in nature Section Two prohibits any voting standard practice or procedure that results in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color So there is a specific example of a locality which is trying to make voting harder by cutting polling places This is happening all over the nation Here's one interesting Uh going back to Wyoming it says Wyoming governor objects to very odd DOJ election monitoring Two election monitors from the Justice Department tried to interview voters and examine voting machines at polling places during Wyoming's primaries last week drawing pushback from Wyoming's Republican Governor I think we are going to see this type of thing increase very rapidly over the next couple of months They are normalizing their intrusion into polling places Into you know being around and being able to interact with or manipulate voting machines This governor of Wyoming--I just mentioned it's a very red state This is a republican governor He said he was concerned by the behavior of election observers who visited this polling station in Cheyenne Governor Mark Gordon said it was aggressive unexpected disruptive certainly didn't seem to show respect for the state We're going to get to the bottom of it as best we can This really calls into account the way that elections are run in the US Right Elections are run by the states Not by the federal government So when you have the federal government interrupting regular state activities Doing Monitoring Being aggressive Pushing their way in Insisting that You know they're in charge That type of thing It makes it very difficult for the states to be able to run their elections confidently and it creates co-chaos right It sows a lack of confidence and discord in the whole system Which is exactly what this administration wants It wants to be able to say the elections were run uh you know incorrectly It was a mess It's all the state's fault Even though it could be because they interfered They made things more difficult They sowed the chaos initially ICE plans to pay five million dollars to create a national voting database.

First of all, five million dollars is nothing.

That's no amount of money, especially for a project of this size.

We've been doing more of these plays in the episodes and I would say so far, I would say medium results.

Wyoming's Republican Governor Mark Gordon told reporters, quote, it was aggressive, unexpected, disruptive, certainly didn't seem to show respect for the state.

The state's lieutenant governor could only shake his head because he's a moose.

In other terrifying democracy news, Senator Richard Blumenthal released a statement by a whistleblower alleging that the Trump administration's scheme to monitor mail-in ballots through the postal service has potentially catastrophic problems that could disenfranchise millions of people.

There is no side.

[laughs] Uh, then Tommy celebrates his birthday by sitting down with Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, the Dem nominee for governor in a critical state.

Oh, yes, it's your birthday.

Happy birthday, Tommy.

Uh, and that's not the only voting story out there that's, uh, kind of alarming.

There's a disturbing report about election monitors from the Department of Justice attempting to interview voters and inspect voting machines in Wyoming during the primaries last week.

Uh, the state's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, said the election monitors' behavior was, quote, "Very odd," and called the move, quote, "Aggressive, unexpected, and disruptive." That is the Republican governor of Wyoming saying that.

Uh, what'd you guys make of that story?

Plus, aggressive, unexpected and disruptive.

What Wyoming's Republican governor, we just mentioned him a moment ago, says happened when two DOJ election monitors showed up at the primaries.

We are back in 90 seconds.

Three o'clock, kids are home.

Messaging disconnect there.

Ladies, don't go anywhere.

We're going to come back in one sec and we are going to talk about two DOJ election monitors and what they did during the Wyoming primaries that has the Republican governor of Wyoming demanding an investigation.

3 o'clock, kids are home.