TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida wants local election officials to use data collected by far-right activists, some of whom falsely believe the 2020 election was stolen, to potentially remove people from the state’s voter rolls, according to Post Office. emails obtained by Keynote USA.
The network of activists has been collecting voter data in 24 states, and on May 3, one of them emailed Florida-specific information to a top state elections official. It included the names of about 10,000 voters statewide who the group insists should be vetted for possible removal from voter rolls, a process commonly known as roll maintenance.
The state’s top elections official then sent that information to county election supervisors and asked them to “take action.”
“I apologize for the delay in forwarding the following email and attachment from a concerned citizen regarding potential registered interstate voters,” Maria Matthews, director of the Florida Division of Elections, wrote in a Sept. 15 email. May, two weeks after it was originally sent to you. the 10,000 names.
Matthews acknowledged that it was unclear how the list of names was compiled or where the data came from.
“I do not know exactly when the information was collected or what sources were consulted to obtain this list,” he wrote.
The “concerned citizen” who sent the May 3 email was Dan Heim, a veteran Florida-based activist who has made unfounded allegations of voter fraud across the state. He told Matthews in the email that he worked with a group that helped create a program called EagleAI (pronounced “Eagle Eye”), a database loaded with voter lists and other records that promises to quickly analyze the data and find records. that may be suspicious based on other sources.
It was founded by a retired physician, Dr. John W. “Rick” Richards Jr., and was presented last year to a group of conservative election activists from the Election Integrity Network. That group was founded by former Trump election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who was a central figure in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Last year, a special Georgia grand jury unanimously recommended that she be indicted for her role in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in that state. (She has not been charged in the case.)
“The left is going to hate this,” Mitchell said during an EagleAI rally to the Election Integrity Network last year. “They will hate it. But we love it.”
That comment was made in videos of program demos obtained last year by Keynote USA. The conservative activists present were guided to personally evaluate voter registrations one by one, search for home addresses on Google Maps to see if the address looked like a house, search for obituaries online, and prepare lists of questionable records to report to local officials.
The use of EagleAI data to select voter lists has raised concerns at All Voting is Local Action, a multistate voting rights group.
In a letter sent Friday morning and first obtained by Keynote USA, the group asks Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd to tell local election officials to “ignore” the email with the names of 10,000 voters, to encourage counties to “do not perform list maintenance.” based on unreliable and unreviewed data, including EagleAI and similar databases,” and not use a state election research office initiated by Governor Ron DeSantis to make any communications that may be perceived as “inappropriate or threatening.”
“The list was not provided information regarding the data source or methodology used to identify these voters,” reads the letter, which was signed by a group of voting rights groups. “In Florida it is a criminal offense to file frivolous challenges, which are subject to misdemeanor penalties for each challenged voter.”
The letter was also signed by the NAACP, Common Cause Florida, the Legal Defense Fund and the Advancement Project.
It alleges that the email to Matthews could also violate state law that says someone who questions a voter’s eligibility must live in the same county as the voter. In that case, Heim couldn’t challenge 10,000 voters unless he lived in the same county as each of them.
Brad Ashwell, Florida state director for All Voting is Local Action, told Keynote USA that allowing thousands of names to be challenged at once could have the effect of bogging down election officials pursuing false allegations of possible voter fraud.
“It is a voter suppression technique and can jam the electoral machinery at critical points,” he said. “EagleAI has been on our radar for a while and it was downright disturbing when we saw this email. Not just because the state is sending this list of voters to the supervisors, but basically because it is subverting state law on a couple of fronts.”
His group also has a presence in the seven key states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but he says Florida is the first state to have so much movement trying to insert EagleAI data into the maintenance list. process.
Wesley Wilcox, supervisor of elections in Marion County, Florida, said that 95% of the records identified in his county were records that his office had already identified for voter roll maintenance: records that have already been deleted or whose elimination is scheduled in accordance with the Law.
Recommended
The records had also been erroneously labeled as “Martin County.”
“If they demand a 100% accuracy rate, I think I should be able to expect the same accuracy,” he added.
Christina White, supervisor of elections in Miami-Dade County, said the list she received from the state contained only one voter from her county who was also potentially registered in another state.
“As due diligence and per our standard operating procedures, we reached out to the other jurisdiction to determine if this is the same voter. We are awaiting additional information and will take appropriate action based on our collective findings,” he said.
Matthews did not respond to a request for comment, but Mark Ard, director of external affairs for the Florida Department of State, said that “it is not uncommon for the Department and/or Supervisors of Elections to receive information from concerned citizens about possible ineligibility and /or possible electoral fraud.”
“Regardless of the source, if the Department receives information regarding list maintenance, we share that information with the Supervisors of Elections to act accordingly,” Ard said. “However, neither the Department nor the Supervisors would, or should, take action to change a voter’s registration, remove a voter from the rolls, or refer a voter for investigation without first exercising due diligence to determine that there is credible and reliable information to support the initial information provided.”
A man who answered Heim’s phone number hung up after an Keynote USA reporter identified himself. Heim also did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
In an email, Richards defended EagleAI, saying: “The worst-case scenario is likely that one of several thousand ineligible registrants will be removed for each registrant who must spend a few minutes validating their eligibility. While it is inconvenient for that individual, it’s a very small price.” to pay for honest elections.”
In a statement last year, he emphasized that EagleAI does not make determinations about voter eligibility.
“It simply flags voter records that need to be reviewed by election officials,” Richards said at the time.
Florida withdrew its membership from another interstate list-keeping program, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), more than a year ago, after right-wing blogs spread conspiracy theories about the program. ERIC was run by member states and used protected personal data, such as driver’s license numbers, to ensure accuracy in flagging problems in voter registrations.
Heim himself has a long history in Florida of falsely pushing claims of voter fraud.
He is one of the leaders of a group called “Defend Florida,” which has traveled the state trying to document voter fraud and then uses the false information it collects to pressure state lawmakers to change Florida’s election laws.
In 2022, he met with Republican Florida state senator Travis Hutson to try to claim that his group had found tens of thousands of cases of voter fraud in Florida. After Hutson asked the group for weeks to provide the information, it ultimately turned over only 230 names, none of whom had committed voter fraud, according to a review by then-Secretary of State Laurel Lee, a Republican who is now a member of Congress. . .
“They were in my office quite a bit,” Hutson recalled in an interview Thursday with Keynote USA. “After begging them for their details, they finally brought me a list of 230 votes that they say were cast illegally. “It wasn’t the tens of thousands that they claim.”
He said he took the information to Lee, who said after a review that none of the designated voters had voted more than once.
The group “was saying things like a person would vote in Miami and hours later in the (Florida) Panhandle,” Hutson said. “You can’t even make that trip in about eight hours.”
When Matthews sent the email and 10,000 voter names to local election officials, he made no mention of the group’s partisan ties or Heim’s long history in the state of falsely pushing claims of voter fraud.
It simply called for “action” based, in part, on EagleAI data.
“Please take action…as you deem appropriate and helpful based on the information and current status of registered voters in your system,” he wrote.
Matt Dixon reported from Florida and Jane C. Timm from New York.
Keynote USA
For the Latest Local News, Follow @Keynote USA Local on Twitter.