After Florida left a national database last year that was used to check the accuracy of voter rolls, some are questioning how the state will protect against the possibility of voter fraud this November. One organization sent a letter to the state with a list of thousands of potentially double-registered voters, but other groups are pushing back, saying that list isn’t accurate.
On May 15th, Florida Division of Elections Director Maria Matthews received a list from a man named Dan Heim, who works with a group called EagleAI (pronounced "eagle eye"). The list contained approximately 10,000 names that Heim claims may be registered in more than one state.
Matthews sent the list to local elections supervisors, but cautioned she wasn’t sure how the list was made. Still, the state’s actions are concerning for Brad Ashwell, the Florida director of a group called All Voting is Local Action.
“This is the first we’re seeing the state promote it," he says, "and this is the first time anywhere in the country we’re seeing a state promoting the use of EagleAI.”
Ashwell responded by sending his own letter to Secretary of State Cord Byrd. Other voting rights groups and left-leaning organizations including the NAACP Florida State Conference, Common Cause Florida, Equality Florida and the ACLU of Florida signed on. They’re concerned that EagleAI isn’t a good source for ensuring the accuracy of Florida’s voter rolls.
In the past, Florida has used a national database for that—the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC. It helped elections officials identify voters who moved or passed away, so they could be taken off the state’s voter rolls. But last year Florida withdrew from ERIC. Byrd said in a press release the state left because ERIC didn’t do enough to protect confidential voter information.
Here’s Byrd speaking with Neil McCabe of One America News. McCabe points out that Gov. Ron DeSantis had brought Florida into ERIC in 2019. Byrd says that move was intended to protect the integrity of the voter rolls.
“But ultimately, there came a time when that was no longer tenable," Byrd said. "And we were very concerned with the protection and integrity of the data that we were entrusting with ERIC and the partisan nature of some of the individuals that are leading the organization.”
But voting officials say EagleAI doesn’t appear to be a good replacement. In a statement to WFSU, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley said his office had received the list of potential cross-state voter activity generated by EagleAI. But after looking into the names from Leon County, his staff found no evidence of double voting.
The issue of double voting is a hot one in that it’s a concern to those who think that people are voting who shouldn’t. A recent story reported by The Tampa Bay Times-Miami Herald shows that just as Ashwell feared, leaving ERIC made a difference in Florida’s election fraud referrals. The unit received 93 percent fewer referrals about double-voters from other states in 2023 than it did the year before. Here’s Ashwell:
“The Times-Herald did a great job of looking at the report produced by the Office of Election Crimes and identifying that the number of duplicate registrants – people registered in multiple states – was way down," he says. "And that goes right along with what we expected, with the state leaving ERIC last year. It was the best tool the state had in its toolkit to identify voters that were registered in another state.”
In other words, according to the Times-Herald, Florida’s voter-fraud unit received 72 tips from other states about people who could be registered to vote in more than one state. That’s down from 986 or more in 2022. Fewer referrals doesn’t mean it’s happening less, but that elections supervisors have to work harder to stop it. That could be important as a major election looms in just a few months.
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