Overview
- Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent a letter this week asking Attorney General Todd Blanche to review whether the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) improperly passed state motor‑vehicle and voter data to private groups, including the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR).
- DHS flagged possible violations of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which bars redisclosing motor‑vehicle information or using it to contact people except for narrow government or research uses, and said ERIC exposed Social Security and driver’s license numbers to contractors and third parties.
- The department cited state records and emails that it says show CEIR coordinated outreach based on ERIC lists and noted a DHS claim that at least nine states with more than 48 million registered voters could be implicated, but it did not say DOJ has opened a criminal probe.
- CEIR and ERIC dispute Mullin’s account, saying CEIR did not receive ongoing motor‑vehicle data or condition grants on access to such data and that DHS did not seek clarification from CEIR before issuing the letter.
- The request follows earlier lawsuits and scrutiny over 2020 private grants to election groups and asks DOJ also to review whether ballot‑marking devices create reliable paper records for manual audits, tying data privacy and auditability concerns into a broader review of election practices.