FBI invites NH secretary of state on call to discuss ‘preparations’ for midterm elections

The meeting comes as the Trump administration and New Hampshire are engaged in a legal battle over the state’s voter rolls. (Photo by Kate Brindley/New Hampshire Bulletin)

The FBI invited New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan and election officials from states across the country to a virtual meeting later this month to “discuss our preparations” for the upcoming 2026 midterm elections, according to an email obtained by the Bulletin.

The email was signed by FBI Election Executive Kellie M. Hardiman and invites the election officials to a Feb. 25 Microsoft Teams meeting. In addition to the FBI, representatives from the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Election Assistance Council will be on the call, according to the letter. The email also invites members of the EAC’s Local Leadership Council — a panel of local election officials from across the United States — for another March 5 meeting.

Scanlan told the Bulletin he “tentatively” accepted the invite. He said he may be called to testify in an ongoing federal trial over New Hampshire’s new proof-of-citizenship voting law, which would create a scheduling conflict. If that happened, he said he would send his deputy, Brendan O’Donnell, as a proxy.

Scanlan said meeting with federal officials is “not unusual,” though he doesn’t remember a meeting of this exact type in the past. Scanlan has served as secretary of state since 2022, and before that served as deputy secretary for 20 years.

“I don’t recall — although there may have been — a Zoom meeting or a conference call with the FBI in the past,” he said. “But I know that whenever the secretaries of state association meets — we meet a couple of times a year — that it’s not unusual that we have representatives from the FBI or Homeland Security or CISA (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration) just briefing us on what’s going on.”

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Scanlan said he’ll have to “wait and see what it’s all about.”

“I really don’t know what to expect out of this meeting,” he said. “I think I can guess a little bit based on comments coming out of the administration. Obviously, they want information from voter databases. They’re concerned about citizenship requirements. I would expect that those might be topics that come up, but I don’t know that for certain.”

The meeting comes as the Trump administration and New Hampshire are engaged in a legal battle over the state’s voter rolls. Last July, the federal government asked Scanlan to turn over the state’s voter files, ostensibly to verify the state’s voter rolls are accurate. Scanlan refused to do so, citing New Hampshire state law that requires the state’s voter database be confidential. In New Hampshire, some voter information is public, like names and party affiliations, but the Trump administration reportedly requested partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers, which are not. The Trump administration subsequently sued New Hampshire — and several other states that also refused to hand over voter rolls — in September, attempting to compel them to turn over the files.

It also comes weeks after the FBI raided an election in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized truckloads of 2020 election ballots, according to national news reports. Fulton County has been at the center of President Donald Trump’s repeatedly debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him.

Trump has also recently called to “nationalize” elections in some states. On the “Dan Bongino Show” podcast last week, Trump said that “Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting in at least — many — 15 places,’” alleging that some states were allowing undocumented immigrants to vote at high numbers. Elections have been run by the states since the founding of the country, as outlined in the Constitution, in a purposefully decentralized system.

The White House referred the Bulletin to the FBI and DOJ for questions, but neither agency responded to the Bulletin’s emailed questions about the upcoming meetings.