The latest lawfare to hit the Cowboy State is being waged by retired attorney George Powers. He is the husband of Marguerite Herman, Cheyenne activist and lobbyist for the League of Women Voters of Wyoming.
Most recently, Powers’ signature appeared on the recent attack letter signed by 110 lawyers. Before that, he published a condescending screed against Wyoming’s Trump voters whom, in 2022, he still characterized as “our maskless neighbors.”
Now, Powers is on the warpath against the hugely popular election integrity work of Secretary of State, Chuck Gray. His complaint is that Gray responded positively to an official request from the Department of Justice.
On June 25, 2025, Wyoming received a letter from the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ asking the state to provide 15 separate items related to voter registration including “Wyoming’s statewide voter registration list” (VRL). On July 24, Gray responded with a 15-page letter and a redacted version of the VRL.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon followed up with an August 14 letter that asked the state to send the VRL with “all fields, including the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number as required under the Help America Vote Act (“HAVA”).”
Dhillon cited three federal laws - the Help America Vote Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the National Voter Registration Act. Most notably, the Civil Rights Act (52 U.S. Code 20703) requires that “upon demand in writing by the Attorney General or his representative directed to the person having custody, possession, or control of such record or paper, (shall) be made available for inspection, reproduction, and copying. . .”
Dhillon reminded Gray that the supremacy clause of the United States Constitution means that “[a]ny statewide prohibitions are preempted by federal law.”
On August 28, 2025, Gray responded to the Assistant Attorney General. “Following a review of your letter that also included the Attorney General’s Office, we are satisfying this request.” He continued, “Upon review of the provisions cited in your letter, and discussion of the applicable provisions of the Civil Rights Act with the Wyoming Attorney General, we agree that the disclosure of the requested records is proper under the Civil Rights Act.”
Regarding any privacy concerns, Gray wrote, “With your assurances that the federal privacy protections, including the application of Section 304 of the Civil Rights Act, apply to these records, we anticipate that the Department of Justice will maintain the confidentiality of these records in accordance with Wyoming law.”
That seems reasonable to me - especially since Wyoming already shares its un-redacted voter registration list with the Saber Corporation, a private contractor that keeps it on a server in Oregon.
Dhillon’s request is part of a nationwide effort to make certain that every state follows federal laws that prevent states from ignoring voter list maintenance. To give an idea of the scale of the problem, Dhillon recently disclosed that, after a review of only 60 million records, the Civil Rights Division has already uncovered 350,000 dead voters and 25,000 people with no citizenship records.
Tom Fitton, of Judicial Watch, has been working on this voter list problem through FOIA requests and compliance lawsuits for years. Most recently, Judicial Watch concluded a settlement that forced the state of Oregon to remove 160,000 fraudulent registrations. His watchdog group estimates that, if all states are required to follow federal laws, they will have to remove as many as 24 million fraudulent voters from the roles.
That is why 17 states responded favorably to the same sort of requests that Sec. Gray honored. According to the Brennen Center, Wyoming was joined by North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, and Ohio in providing the requested information.
Dhillon did not even have to send a request to Montana, Kansas, Missouri and Florida since these states keep their VRL information available to the public.
Those 30 states that have refused to comply with the Civil Rights Act are currently being sued by the DOJ. Many are falsely arguing that the federal government will be directly editing their voter lists. Others are saying that the government is compiling a nation-wide database of voters.
Both assertions contradict the Memorandum of Understanding that requires the DOJ to “destroy all VRL/Data associated with actual records as soon as the purposes of the list maintenance project have been accomplished.”
Lawfare can be employed for various purposes. Sometimes it is used to damage a person or a cause by creating the false appearance of illegality. Other times it is used to slow walk perfectly legal government actions to run out the clock.
Either way, Wyomingites should see it for what it is.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com
