Federal court dismisses Trump’s lawsuit over Maine voter rolls

The U.S. District Court in Maine delivered a blow to President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice Thursday, granting the state’s motion to throw out the federal government’s lawsuit over Maine refusing to turn over sensitive voter data. 

Further, Chief U.S. District Judge Lance Walker concluded that the government’s stated purpose for the request — to ensure compliance with federal voter laws — is insufficient. Such an interpretation of federal law, Walker wrote in his ruling, “would take a sledgehammer to the balance Congress struck when it required states to create and maintain computerized lists of registered voters in the first place.”  

“Under our Constitution, states are the primary regulators and administrators of elections for federal office, unless Congress passes legislation that preempts that framework,” Walker wrote. “And Congress’s power to do even that is itself subject to limitations.”

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows twice rejected requests from the Trump administration for Maine’s full, unredacted voter rolls — among other information — and the DOJ responded with a lawsuit in September. Attorney General Aaron Frey, on behalf of the state, asked the district court to dismiss the lawsuit in December.

Bellows said in a statement that Thursday’s ruling affirms that the states are in charge of elections. 

“Let me clear – Trump and the DOJ may continue to try to interfere with free and fair elections run by the states,” said Bellows, who is also running for governor. “We will not let them.”

Eight rulings have now sided with states pushing back against Trump’s attempted data grabs, after the ruling in Maine along with another in Wisconsin on Thursday. 

In making its demands, the DOJ had cited the Civil Rights Act to assess compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and Help America Vote Act. 

“If the Department of Justice wants to enforce HAVA and the NVRA, it must use the pre-suit investigation and enforcement mechanisms that Congress provided in those statutes,” Walker wrote, adding, “which do not contemplate production of the unredacted computerized list to the Attorney General so that he might loom over the shoulder of the state election official to point out and demand the correction of inaccuracies in the list.”