EIN advises its network of state-level groups to conduct voter roll challenges using EagleAI, a tool designed to automatically create lists of ineligible voters. Activists in EIN’s network across the country take these lists and manually review them, sometimes canvassing door-to-door to support their challenges, a practice that has become increasingly common. Sentenced for voter intimidation. Experts I have already pointed this out as well Flaws have been discovered in EagleAI’s system: small spelling errors in names, such as missing commas, can lead to names being incorrectly removed from voter lists. The software is also reportedly facing numerous technical problemsDespite this, one county in Georgia has already signed a contract with the company to use the tool as part of its voter registration system.
Leaked documents Published this month by Documented and ProPublica Reports show that one of EagleAI’s funders is Ziklag, a top-secret group of wealthy individuals dedicated to promoting an openly Christian nationalist agenda. According to an internal video obtained by ProPublica, Ziklag plans to invest $800,000 in the “EagleAI roll-cleaning project,” and one of the group’s goals is to “remove up to one million ineligible records and about 280,000 ineligible voters” in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.
Mitchell and EIN are also working with several other groups that support mass voter roll challenges. One of them is VoteRef, which has obtained and published voter rolls for more than 161 million voters in 31 states. The group is led by Gina Swoboda, a former Trump campaign official and current chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party. State election officials have said VoteRef’s claims about voter roll discrepancies are “fundamentally incorrect” and Highlighted important privacy concerns on the data that VoteRef is making available to the public.
EIN is also working with Check My Vote, a website that hosts publicly available voter lists and highlights what it calls irregularities, urging those using the system to create walk-through lists that activists can use to canvass door-to-door before filing challenges with voters with a template available for download from the site.
Mitchell and EIN did not respond to a request for comment.
“These groups and the broader denialist movement have been building these structures, building these projects, over many, many months and years, in preparation for this moment,” says Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of Documented. “And finally the pieces are falling into place, and they can start filing these mass challenges to gain voter eligibility.”
Voter rolls are notoriously difficult to maintain, given federal laws that prevent citizens from being purged years after they have left the jurisdiction. But there is no evidence to support claims that this problem causes voter fraud. And election administrators told WIRED that the processes in place to ensure voter rolls are as accurate as possible are already working.
“We are aware of an increase in voter registration challenges over the past year, often filed by a single person or entity, on the grounds that a voter may no longer reside at the address of registration,” says Matt Heckel, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State. “These challenges are an attempt to circumvent list maintenance processes that are carefully prescribed by state and federal law.”
