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New Hampshire’s secretary of state, a Republican, has declined to assist the Trump Department of Justice’s efforts in collecting a vast swath of information about the state’s election processes, including the state’s voter rolls.
Earlier this summer, the Trump administration sent letters requesting to see several states’ voter rolls as part of what appears to be an effort to interfere in upcoming elections, continuing Donald Trump’s yearslong conspiracy theories about purported election irregularities. New Hampshire was among the states that the Justice Department wanted to question about its processes for voter registration and the removal of ineligible voters.
Secretary of State David Scanlan replied in a letter of his own last Friday, answering some questions but saying others “ask for information that pose cybersecurity risk if disclosed.”
He continued:
As you know, the Department of Homeland Security regards election systems and assets as ‘critical infrastructure,’ defined by Congress as ‘systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.’
Scanlan also gave a straightforward reply in the negative in response to the request to see his state’s voter rolls. “New Hampshire law authorizes the Secretary of State to release the statewide voter registration list in limited circumstances not applicable here,” he said. Municipal checklists of registered voters are public information in New Hampshire, however, and Scanlan suggested the department make individual inquiries with the dozens of local officials who maintain those lists.
The Trump administration and its allies in the Republican Party have been ramping up their election-meddling efforts ahead of the 2026 midterms, with some states pursuing mid-decade redistricting to gerrymander their congressional districts as others voluntarily turn over voter data to Trump’s overtly antidemocratic Department of Justice.
Other states have been willing to stand up to the administration. This also includes Maine, where Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, gave a colorful response to the Trump administration’s demands. “My answer to the DOJ is, ‘Go jump in the Gulf of Maine,’” she said in a recent interview.