Do you trust the election system in Massachusetts?

Do you believe Massachusetts elections are above board and free from fraud?

Do you believe only eligible, legal voters cast ballots in the state?

We won’t know the answers to those questions because Secretary of State William Galvin, the eight-term Democratic fossil running the state’s elections, won’t let the Trump administration see details of the state’s voting records.

Galvin, in a totally political response to the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Massachusetts and 17 other states to collect detailed voter data, won’t budge because he says Republican Donald Trump will abuse it.

Galvin should be leading the way for election integrity and total transparency, but instead Mr. Transparency is stonewalling.

“I have absolutely no intention of handing over the names, addresses, dates of birth, political party affiliation, phone numbers, driver’s license numbers and social security numbers of our voters to an administration that has demonstrated a pattern of using citizens’ private information to go on outrageous fishing expeditions in an attempt to settle petty grievances,” Galvin said in a statement.

“DOJ has provided no meaningful justification for needing access to every Massachusetts voter’s personally identifiable information,” the Brighton Democrat said.

Attorney General Andrea Campbell goes even further in fighting the “Trump administration’s attempt to misuse voters’ personal information as fuel for its cruel and harmful agenda.”

So Galvin and Campbell have decided only they can know that information about voters, and we can trust them, right? What gives Galvin the right to have the information and not provide it to the federal government?

Galvin is charged with making sure the electoral system is honest and competent. In order to vote, you have to be alive, be a citizen, be registered and not vote multiple times. It’s pretty simple.

But even those basic requirements seem under question because of the Democrats’ fight with Trump over what they see as a fishing expedition to root out illegal immigrants from the voting system.

Democrats are fearful feds will find irregularities in the voting lists, and that’s what the fight is all about.

The Justice Department wants things like addresses, partial social security numbers and drivers’ license numbers to prove voters are legal.

The DOJ says Massachusetts and other states are violating the law and Civil Rights Act by refusing to divulge voter lists. Just two red states, Indiana and Wyoming, have complied.

“If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said.

If you want to know whether elections are run well, just look at Boston. The city’s election department had to be put in receivership because it ran out of ballots in 14 precincts in the 2024 election. Calls to the Election Department went unanswered all day.

So clearly there is a problem with elections in Massachusetts.

With the midterm elections coming up next year, voting integrity is more important than ever. Republicans want only legal citizens voting, while Democrats want to pad their advantage with immigrants. A few thousand can make a difference in an election.

But with mail-in ballots, voting a month before the election, bills to let 16- and 17-year-olds vote, a ballot question to allow same-day registration on Election Day, and resistance to showing even an ID to vote, there’s a big trust gap now with Americans when it comes to elections.

And Galvin is doing nothing to close that gap. Instead he’s hiding behind Democratic politics.