Secretary Bellows rejects Trump administration’s second request for more Maine voter data

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows responded on Monday to a second request from the federal government for more sensitive voter information, again rebuffing the request and reiterating her concerns about the Trump administration’s intentions.

In a letter dated Aug. 18, the U.S. Department of Justice again requested Maine’s full voter registration list — including all fields, such as driver’s license numbers, partial social security numbers and full dates of birth. 

But this letter, which came from Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ, also added a request for voter registration applications from a 19-month period, from December 1, 2023 to July 1, 2025.

“The Department of Justice hasn’t shown any good reason for its fishing expedition for sensitive voter information on every American,” Bellows said in a statement Monday. “The federal government has a terrible track record keeping private data safe. Their data demands appear to violate federal privacy laws and complying would put the privacy and data security of nearly one million Mainers at risk.”

Trump administration requested voter data. Secretary Bellows says, ‘Go jump in the Gulf of Maine’

The civil rights division of the DOJ sent its first sweeping request for voter data on July 24, which, in addition to the statewide voter registration list, asked for names of officials who handle the list’s maintenance, the number of ineligible voters the state identified due to noncitizenship and other information from November 2022 through the receipt of the letter. Earlier, on July 10, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys sent an email requesting a phone call with Bellows to discuss a “potential information-sharing agreement.”

Bellows officially declined the DOJ request for voter data on Aug. 8, questioning the federal agency’s intentions and asking that the request be withdrawn. 

In its response, the DOJ wrote that the purpose of its request for personal voter information is to assess the state’s compliance with the statewide voter registration list maintenance provisions of the National Voter Registration Act. Bellows dismissed that reasoning in her letter sent Monday, noting that the First Circuit Court of Appeals has expressly recognized that the act does not require disclosure of such information.

Bellows also raised concern about how the DOJ’s request complies with federal privacy laws, such as the Privacy Act of 1974 and the e-Government Act of 2004, given that the department hasn’t shared how voters’ personal information will be stored, accessed and retained within government systems.

“It is my understanding that DOJ intends to feed Maine’s voter file into some sort of

unidentified information technology system in an attempt to identify duplicate and other invalid

registrations,” Bellows wrote, referring to the Trump administration’s repurposing of an existing federal immigration database, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, into a platform to verify voters’ citizenship. 

Bellows spoke with Maine Morning Star and its partner outlet Stateline about SAVE earlier this summer. She said she had a phone call with officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who said the agency planned to retain SAVE data for 10 years for “audit purposes only.”

“Just like the [Justice Department] is asking us to hand over an electronic file of all the voters in our state, it seems like the Department of Homeland Security is through this backdoor system also asking us to share voter information about every voter in our state,” Bellows told Stateline. 

While Maine, like several other states, has declined the DOJ’s demands for sensitive voter data, Bellows shared state policies and practices in her Aug. 8 response. 

If the DOJ provides additional information addressing her concerns about intended use and privacy outlined in her Monday letter, Bellows wrote she would “carefully consider that information.” But, she wrote, “At this time, however, I am unable to comply with the DOJ’s requests for unredacted information concerning all Maine voters.”