AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine will not turn over voter registration data that President Donald Trump’s administration has been seeking from states, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said Tuesday.
Bellows, a Democrat, held a news conference in Augusta to share that update on what her office called the U.S. Department of Justice’s “unprecedented request” for access to voter registration lists from at least nine states so far. Pushback has come from both red and blue states, as the Republican secretary of state in neighboring New Hampshire also declined the Trump administration’s request last week by citing current statutes and cybersecurity concerns.
“Go jump in the Gulf of Maine,” Bellows said of her message to the Justice Department.
That remark echoed a “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico” comment from 2017 that Mississippi’s Republican secretary of state at the time directed at a voter fraud commission Trump had established during his first term. Bellows noted her Democratic predecessor and current State Auditor Matt Dunlap rejected in 2017 a similar request for voting data from Trump’s commission.
Bellows said she shared the Justice Department’s request with Attorney General Aaron Frey’s office and that the state will formally respond in the coming days. She said Maine’s response will note Article I of the Constitution gives states authority over elections.
Bellows said the national secretaries of state association is expecting all 50 states to eventually receive similar requests from the Justice Department. The requests to states in recent months appear to revolve around a desire to remove ineligible voters from the rolls but also came amid Trump continuing to falsely claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Additionally, the Maine Republican Party claimed in June it found more than 600 duplicative voting records and evidence of voters casting multiple ballots here, but the secretary of state’s office conducted a review and said those claims are without merit.
The request from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was dated Thursday. A Justice Department spokesperson, Natalie Baldassarre, declined to comment Tuesday when asked about Bellows’ update.
The department’s letter asks Bellows for an electronic copy of Maine’s statewide voter registration list along with other information, such as steps Maine has taken to remove ineligible voters and the list of local and state election officials who are responsible for voter registration list maintenance since November 2022.
Bellows said she was unsure of the Justice Department’s motivations in seeking the voter registration data but wondered if it’s because they are “trying to change the topic away from the Epstein files or because they’re trying to sow false narratives to undermine voter confidence in our strong election systems.”
Wisconsin and Minnesota have also not turned over voter registration records at the Trump administration’s request. Wisconsin election officials pointed Justice Department officials to a state law that would require the department to pay $12,500 for the data and said the federal government has not followed up on the request.
Bellows is running for governor in 2026. She ruled Trump ineligible for the Maine Republican primary ballot in late 2023, citing his role in inciting the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021. That decision thrust the state’s top election official into the national spotlight, and her decision was overturned last spring by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Asked Tuesday about whether she trusts Trump’s Justice Department with how it conducts investigations into voting records and other matters, Bellows said her office has “concerns because this seems to be a political request not grounded in any authority that they have or any historical precedence.”
Bellows added the state cooperates with the Justice Department on “legitimate” requests and that the voter data inquiry does not meet that standard.
“The DOJ doesn’t get to know everything about you just because they want to,” Bellows said.