The Department of Justice sued Maine and Oregon over states that refused to hand over voter registration information.
Trump threatens to close email-in votes before mid-2026
President Donald Trump threatened an executive order to close mail-in voting before the mid-term of 2026.
Maine’s top election official said he doesn’t trust what the Trump administration will do with personal voter information he refuses to hand over to the Justice Department.
Information including Social Security Number, Address and Party Affiliation is at the heart of two lawsuits filed September 16 by the Department of Justice.
Maine Secretary of State Shena Bellows told USA Today that she has not given a satisfactory answer on how this information will be used since her initial information request for information in July. Similar voter registration requests have been made for election officials in more than 25 states in the name of eradicating voters not permitted to live in the United States. Bellows question why the sector requires a mass database belonging to the American Party.
“It’s very scary when the Department of Justice, who has the unique power to investigate and prosecute people, is suddenly getting access to (information about who they are) and making decisions based on politics,” Bellows said.
The Justice Department alleges in a lawsuit filed against both Maine and Oregon on September 16, the state refused to provide an electronic copy of the statewide voter registration list and an electronic copy of information on maintaining the voter list for the Trump administration.
Earlier in the summer, the department asked more than 20 states to hand over the federal government a full voter role, including party affiliation, Social Security number and address, as part of an effort to see if non-citizens were voting.
Bellows said there was only one previous administration that sought the voter role in Maine. Trump is in his first term. The demands made by the Presidential Advisory Committee, which President Trump created rather than the Department of Justice, were improvisedly rejected by the Secretary of State by both parties, she said.
“All secretaries in 2017 said no to flip the sensitive personal information of voters,” she said.
Bellows said she is concerned about what the department is planning by personally identifying millions of American voter information.
“States that are not federal and certainly not president are in charge of elections,” Bellows said. “They are using the immeasurable federal power to blackmail election officials and get sensitive personal voter data.”
Asked about the lawsuit’s allegation, she replied to the DOJ, “We’ll see you in court.”
The Trump administration says it is preventing non-citizens from voting
On March 25, Trump signed an executive order entitled “Maintaining and Protecting the integrity of the American Election,” which aimed to strengthen existing laws that ban the White House from voting in federal elections.
The order called for a comprehensive review of the state’s voter registration role to verify eligibility and US citizenship. 19 states are appealing to block the order.
The Justice Department argued that state secretaries in Maine and Oregon were required by the National Voters Registration Act of 1993, the American Voting Act of 2002, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960, by answering questions about voter registration procedures and programs. The state also argues that it is necessary to take over a full digital copy of the voter role when requested.
“The recent demands of the Civil Rights Division of the state voter role are based on its legal authority, with corresponding data being screened for entries from unqualified voters,” Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Bardassar told USA Today.
Baldassarre did not answer questions as to why he was suing Maine and Oregon, not other states.
Election officials in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Washington and other states say no or pushed back on demand. Some states, such as Colorado, provide voter information to the DOJ. Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales provided the department with personally identifiable information about all registered voters, but withheld voting history.
The DOJ is suing only Democrat-run states, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias said in a statement provided to USA Today.
“It tells you everything you need to know. For the federal government, this is all about politics,” he said. “Let’s be clear. This is not about safe elections. It’s about silencing power and those who oppose them.”
Information Request
Stateline reported on September 9 that the Department of Justice was sharing a list of voter roles obtained with the Department of Homeland Security to unlawfully discover it with the Department of Homeland Security.
Non-citizen voting is extremely rare, but it has become an important debate on the right to request identification when voting or restricting by mail. One study on the 2016 election found that authorities raised concerns of 30 to 30 out of the 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions. It accounts for 0.0001% of the vote.
The Brennan Justice Center, a nonpartisan, good-looking government group based at New York University, tracks public reports on election data requests. Since May, the Department of Justice has requested information from at least 33 states about election management procedures and processes., According to Brennan. At least 27 of these states are seeking copies of their voter registration list.
Data from the Brennan Center show that at least 11 states are offering some form of voter role to the Department of Justice. Most states “although they vary from state to state, they may contain information such as voter name, address, partisan affiliation, voting history, and more.”
State-by-state reviews on how officials manage voter roles and remove ineligible voters have so far focused on battlefield states.
“If the Trump administration targets only national Democratic secretaries, and Republican secretaries are also on the rise, it raises real questions about what they do with sensitive and personal voting data,” Bellows told USA Today.
