ICYMI from Mother Jones: Maine’s SOS Bellows Leading Charge to Protect Voters’ Personal Information from Trump’s DOJ
Bellows: “The election deniers are now ascendant in the federal government.”
Augusta – In case you missed it, new investigative reporting from Mother Jones highlights how election deniers at the Department of Justice are taking unprecedented steps to target Secretary of State Shenna Bellows as part of their efforts to disenfranchise voters, and how Bellows is leading the national fight to protect voters’ personal information and voting rights.
In recent months, Maine and Secretary of State Bellows have been one of the first states targeted by this frivolous DOJ lawsuit. This is noteworthy but not surprising after Bellows tried to remove Trump from the ballot after January 6th. But Mainer’s know that Secretary Bellows will never back down from a fight on their behalf.
Read More:
Mother Jones: Your Private Data Is Building Trump’s Voter Purge Machine
By Abby Vesoulis and Ari Berman
December 5, 2025
Bellows, a spunky, no-nonsense 50-year-old who grew up in a log cabin without running water, already had received a litany of demand letters, public records requests, and lawsuits throughout her five years serving as the top election integrity official in Maine
The September legal complaint was an escalation of a yearslong coordinated effort by conservatives to obtain voter roll data from numerous states, compare it to incomplete datasets they’d found on the commercial market, then attest that mismatches between the two are clear evidence of people illegally voting.
“The election deniers are now ascendant in the federal government,” says Bellows, who spent eight years as the executive director of the Maine ACLU before assuming her current post. “These requests are not unlike the requests that the organizations they used to be affiliated with have asked for years.” But unlike conservative legal organizations, she adds, “the Department of Justice has the power to investigate, prosecute, and place people in jail.”
Bellows believes Maine was among the first two states to be sued “because of animus”—also known as old-fashioned retribution. The Justice Department already has tried to retaliate against Trump’s political enemies, such as former FBI Director James Comey… Bellows, though lesser known, is likely on the administration’s radar for other reasons, too. Citing the 14th Amendment’s clause barring officials who “engage in” insurrection from holding future office, she attempted to remove Trump from Maine’s 2024 presidential ballot based on his connection to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Responding to that previously unreported accusation [from PILF], Bellows called its claim a “damned lie from an organization that cares more about conspiracy theories than election integrity.”...In February 2025, the state’s election division canceled 180,584 inactive voter registrations—the largest bulk removal in nearly 20 years.
“These unprecedented demands for vast amounts of voter data are part of a larger pattern of actions indicating a reckless grab for power over American elections,” Bellows says.
