The Trump administration’s Justice Department has filed suit against New Hampshire, accusing the state of violating federal law by refusing to turn over its complete voter registration list.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement that “clean and transparent voter rolls” are central to election integrity. “Accurate registration lists help guard against fraud, protect our democracy, and restore public confidence,” she said.
The lawsuit, announced Thursday, is part of a broader federal push against six states — including California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania — that the DOJ says have failed to provide their statewide voter rolls as required by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
New Hampshire is exempt from the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), often called the “Motor Voter” law, but is still covered by the other statutes. The DOJ argues those laws override state confidentiality rules that bar release of certain data.
“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” said U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”
At the heart of the dispute is a clash between state sovereignty and federal oversight. Federal law requires states to maintain accurate and up-to-date voter rolls, and DOJ attorneys argue those statutes give Washington broad authority to compel states to turn over detailed registration data.
But New Hampshire and other states counter that the federal demand goes too far, intruding on voter privacy protections enshrined in state law. Civil liberties groups warn that sharing full voter data — especially identifiers such as driver’s license or Social Security numbers — could create significant risks of misuse.
Secretary of State David Scanlan, New Hampshire’s top election official, has pushed back for months. In letters to federal officials earlier this year, he said state law strictly limits the release of sensitive voter information and bars him from producing the full registration list with personal identifiers.
“State law is clear,” Scanlan wrote in August. “The Secretary of State does not have the authority to release this information.”
Christian Adams, a former DOJ lawyer who now leads the Public Interest Legal Foundation, dismissed that argument. His group won a lawsuit against Maine in 2024 when a federal court ruled that state restrictions on access to voter rolls were preempted by federal law.
“It’s very simple,” Adams said. “The Voting Rights Act gives the attorney general the power to request election records, including the voter rolls.”
Scanlan’s office acknowledged receiving the lawsuit on Thursday but declined further comment.
Critics of the Trump administration say they fear the White House wants to use the information to build a voter-outreach database to help Republicans in next year’s midterms. Supporters counter that the federal government already holds vast amounts of personal data.
Legal scholars expect courts to weigh whether the DOJ’s interpretation of HAVA and related statutes trumps state confidentiality laws. Past Supreme Court rulings, such as Husted v. Randolph Institute in 2018, upheld aggressive list-maintenance practices, but none have directly addressed the kind of sweeping federal data requests now at issue.
In the meantime, Scanlan has pointed to New Hampshire’s recent efforts to improve its own voter-list maintenance. A new state law now requires local officials to verify voter checklists annually rather than once a decade.
The DOJ is determined to press ahead, Dhillon said in a social media post.
“CA, MI, MN, NY, NH, and PA—@TheJusticeDept’s @CivilRights Division has got its eyes on you! American citizens deserve clean voter rolls and confidence in our elections, and certain states need to stop hiding the ball!”
