Overview
- On Friday Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent Attorney General Todd Blanche a letter asking the Justice Department to open a probe into whether the Electronic Registration Information Center unlawfully passed motor-vehicle data to outside groups.
- DHS officials say the records at issue can include Social Security and driver’s license numbers and estimate at least nine states and tens of millions of records could be implicated.
- Mullin cited evidence such as Georgia public-records emails showing coordinated outreach and a Colorado 2022 eligible-but-unregistered list that included about 30,000 noncitizens as examples of problematic uses.
- ERIC disputes allegations and says it is a state-official membership group, while CEIR says Chan Zuckerberg grants funded nonpartisan voter education and reports a slightly lower total than the figure Mullin cites.
- The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act allows limited research uses but bars redisclosure or using data to contact people, and DHS says DOJ action could include penalties, a cease-and-desist order, or review of nonprofit activity that would affect how states share DMV data.