The battle over New Hampshire turning over its list of registered voters rages on with Secretary of State David Scanlan rejecting a second demand from the Trump administration’s Department of Justice for the paperwork.
The response letter from Scanlan came after Trump officials had maintained federal authority superseded a state law regarding voter privacy that New Hampshire officials had cited in its first rejection of the demand last month.
“Having reviewed the citations in your August 18, 2025 letter with legal counsel, there does not appear to be any provision under federal law that compels the production of voter registration data superseding the provisions of New Hampshire statutes that I must follow,” Scanlan wrote in the response released to reporters on Thursday.
During an interview, Scanlan said the Trump lawyers could obtain some of the information they are looking for by requesting the voter list from each local supervisor of the checklist in every city ward and town precinct or by purchasing the statewide list from political parties.
“They do have other options,” Scanlan said.
But the state’s top election official confirmed that the request would not yield one of the things the Trump lawyers are most interested in — those voters who have not cast ballots in recent elections and got their names removed from the rolls.
“You could manually go through all the local election data to cull those names manually but that would require a lot of man hours of work,” Scanlan said.
This legal fight is part of a campaign by the political organization in the White House to seek millions of names from target states in advance of the 2026 midterm elections.
In an Aug. 18 response letter, Harmett K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, said federal laws overcome any state law prohibition to these records.
“To the extent that you claim state law prohibits providing this information, that is incorrect,” Dhillon wrote.
The push for the voting data also has election observers wondering if the goal is to build a file of voter intelligence that could help Trump become more immune to partisan losses in the midterm elections.
The New Hampshire Legislature in 2003 created a law spelling out how the voter database is to be compiled, monitored and protected.
It contains a stark privacy provision that makes the documents not only secret but undiscoverable in a court case.
“The voter database shall be private and confidential and shall not be subject to RSA 91-A (Right-to-Know Law) and RSA 654:31 (Voter Checklist Law) nor shall it or any of the information contained therein be disclosed pursuant to a subpoena or civil litigation discovery request,” the law reads.