Maine rejects DOJ's ‘fishing expedition’ for voter data

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(The Center Square) — Maine's top election official has rejected another request from the Trump administration to turn over the state's voter registration data, criticizing the demands as a "fishing expedition" that would compromise voters' personal information.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat running for governor in 2026, said her office has rebuffed new demands in an Aug. 18 letter from the U.S. Department of Justice to turn over information on Maine’s nearly one million voters. She said the requested data included "highly sensitive" information such as state drivers' license numbers, partial social security numbers, and dates of birth.

In a Sept. 8 letter to DOJ Civil Rights Office Chief Counsel Maureen Riordan, Bellows said she has "grave concerns about the appropriateness and legality of DOJ’s request for personally identifying information" on the state's voters, including recent registrations. She ticked off a litany of privacy concerns about the DOJ's process for collecting and storing the voter registration information.

"If DOJ is willing to provide additional information addressing my concerns ... I will carefully consider that information," Bellows wrote in the three-page letter. "At this time, however, I am unable to comply with the DOJ’s requests for unredacted information concerning all Maine voters."

In a separate statement, Bellows said she rejected the demands because the DOJ "hasn’t shown any good reason for its fishing expedition for sensitive voter information on every American." 

"The federal government has a terrible track record keeping private data safe," she said. "Their data demands appear to violate federal privacy laws and complying would put the privacy and data security of nearly 1 million Mainers at risk." 

Bellows previously rejected a request from the DOJ for voter registration data, telling the federal agency to "go jump in the Gulf of Maine" and saying she will not comply with demands. 

Maine is the latest state targeted by the Trump administration as it investigates state election policies as part of broader efforts to prevent voter fraud. Other states include New York, New Hampshire, Florida and Wisconsin.

In July, New Hampshire's Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, rejected a similar DOJ request for a voter registration list, citing a state law declaring the data "private and confidential” and not subject to public records requests. 

Maine will be voting on a referendum in the Nov. 4 elections that would require people to present a valid state ID or driver’s license to vote or request an absentee ballot for federal, state and local elections. The proposal was recently cleared for the ballot after Maine's highest court rejected a legal challenge over its wording.

Republicans have called on Bellows to resign over her "refusal to cooperate" with the Trump administration by turning over state voter registration rolls. GOP lawmakers pushed unsuccessfully to impeach Bellows for trying to remove Donald Trump's name from the 2024 presidential primary ballot over his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riots. That plan fizzled after Democrats rejected it.