Voting rights groups ask election officials to reject a new tool championed by some conservatives as a way to root out fraudulent voter registrations – because the information is uses is unreliable and could be used to disenfranchise legitimate voters. (Feature, not a bug!) Via CNN:
The leaders of the group behind the new effort, known as EagleAI NETwork, describe the software as “the tool of reckoning across the nation” to help validate, maintain and review election rosters, according to a document provided to the Georgia State Elections Board and obtained by CNN through a public records request. The document also touts the platform’s ability to allow people “interested in voter roll accuracy and integrity” to do their own reviews of voter registrations after getting a “license and credentials.”
Critics have cast the push as an outgrowth of the deep skepticism around election administration that has taken root among some Republicans following Donald Trump’s 2020 loss. Georgia, a key battleground state Trump lost and where EagleAI NETwork is based, has been ground zero for mass challenges by conservative activists seeking – largely unsuccessfully – to remove tens of thousands of voters from the rolls in recent elections.
“EagleAI is another front on the attacks on elections,” said Andrew Garber, a counsel in the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice. Garber co-authored a recent analysis that called on states and local governments to reject outright any voter registration challenges generated by the software and to bar officials from using it. The report cast the tool as seemingly part of a “larger plan to move away from responsible voter list maintenance” that could undermine voting rights.
The doctor behind the new software rejects the notion it would be used to boot legitimate voters.
In an interview with CNN, EagleAI NETwork’s founder, Dr. John W. “Rick” Richards Jr., called the Brennan criticism “total BS.”
“We are trying to help validate the voter rolls to improve the integrity of that part of the process,” he said.
Oh, well then! But wait:
Richards presented the software in March to the conservative Election Integrity Network, a group organized by attorney Cleta Mitchell, who took part in Trump’s phone call in which he asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes for him to win the state’s electors in 2020.
During the presentation, Mitchell called the software “amazing” and said she wanted to “get a plan together” to share the platform with other groups and states that have withdrawn from ERIC.
Hey, if Cleta likes it, that should be good enough for us! Who needs that pesky democracy thing, anyway?
States had a perfectly good voter database they shared, called Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). The problem? It was too accurate. That's why so many Republican-controlled states ditched it. How can you claim Democrats stole an election if you can prove they didn't?
