In a pair of legal filings this week, New Hampshire election officials and a bipartisan group of residents accuse the Trump administration of flouting the law in its demand for the state to turn over confidential voter information.
The state and the citizens are independently asking a judge to dismiss the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit over the voter files, as other federal judges have done in similar lawsuits against other states.
The legal fight began last July, when the federal government asked New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan to turn over the state’s voter files so that it could allegedly confirm the state’s compliance with the Civil Rights Act. While certain information about voters, including their names, addresses and party affiliation, are already publicly available in New Hampshire, the Trump administration requested much more, including voters’ partial Social Security numbers and state driver’s license numbers.
When Scanlan refused to comply, citing a state law that requires that a statewide voter database remain confidential, the Civil Rights Division within the Justice Department filed a lawsuit asking the courts to compel the release of the database.
In a legal filing last week, attorneys for the state said the federal government’s lawsuit should be dismissed as it “is neither supported by any viable legal theory nor by well pleaded facts.”
On Monday, lawyers representing a bipartisan group of voters — including former state Rep. Neal Kurk, a Weare Republican and prominent champion of privacy rights, and Louise Spencer, a progressive activist from Concord — submitted their own legal brief decrying the federal government’s demand for sensitive voter data.
“Notwithstanding the President’s repeated call to ‘nationalize’ our purposefully decentralized election system, the Court should join other courts in dismissing this unprecedented federal overreach, which lacks any valid legal basis in federal law,” they wrote.
According to court filings, the Trump administration has sent letters demanding copies of voter rolls to dozens of states over the past year. While it isn’t clear what the White House or Department of Justice may do with the records, the president has continued to repeat falsehoods about the prevalence of voter fraud in the country.
Last month, the federal government raided the county election offices of Fulton County, Georgia, seizing ballots used in the 2020 election, which Trump lost. Trump has also renewed his calls in recent days for the federal government to play a central role in administering elections, despite constitutional protections that leave elections largely in the hands of the states.
Calling the lawsuit against Scanlan “unprecedented,” attorneys for the state told the court that New Hampshire law prohibits disclosure of the statewide voter database. Scanlan previously offered to share a statewide voter list — something already made available to political parties — though those records don’t include voters’ dates of birth, Social Security numbers, or driver’s license numbers.
The federal government hasn’t yet responded to the motions seeking to dismiss the lawsuit.
In recent weeks, judges in California, Michigan and Oregon have dismissed similar lawsuits brought by the federal government against those states.
