XPost: or.politics   
   From: diaperdon@jam.rr.com   
      
   Shithole State Florida wants local elections 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 emails obtained by NBC News.   
      
   The network of activists has been collecting voter data in 24 states, and   
   on May 3, one of them emailed the Florida-specific information to a top   
   state election official. It included the names of roughly 10,000 voters   
   from across the state the group insists should be examined for potential   
   removal from the voter rolls, a process commonly referred to as list   
   maintenance.   
      
   The state’s chief elections official then forwarded 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 interstate registered voters,”   
   Maria Matthews, the director of the Florida Division of Elections, wrote in   
   a May 15 email, two weeks after she was originally sent the 10,000 names.   
      
   Matthews acknowledged it was unclear how the list of names was compiled or   
   where the data came from.   
      
   “I do not know when the information was exactly compiled and what all   
   sources were consulted to derive this list,” she wrote.   
      
   The “concerned citizen” who sent the May 3 email was Dan Heim, a longtime   
   Florida-based activist who has made unfounded voter fraud claims 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 rolls and other records that promise to quickly churn   
   through the data and find registrations that may be suspect based on other   
   sources.   
      
   It was founded by a retired physician, Dr. John W. “Rick” Richards Jr., and   
   rolled out last year to a group of conservative election activists in 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 trying to overturn the   
   2020 election in that state. (She has not been indicted in the case.)   
      
   “The left will hate this,” Mitchell said during an EagleAI demonstration to   
   the Election Integrity Network last year. “They will hate it. But we love   
   it.”   
      
   That comment was made in videos of program demonstrations obtained last   
   year by NBC News. Conservative activists in attendance were guided to   
   personally evaluate voter registrations one by one, looking up home   
   addresses on Google Maps to see if the address looked like a home,   
   searching for obituaries online and preparing lists of questionable   
   registrations to report to local officials.   
      
   The use of EagleAI data to cull voter rolls has raised concern with All   
   Voting is Local Action, a multistate voting rights group.   
      
   In a letter sent Friday morning and first obtained by NBC News, the group   
   is asking Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd to tell local elections   
   officials to “disregard” the email with the 10,000 voter names, to   
   encourage counties to “not to perform list maintenance based on unreliable   
   and unreviewed data, including from EagleAI and similar databases,” and to   
   not use a state elections investigation office started by Gov. Ron DeSantis   
   to make any communication that could be perceived as “improper or   
   threatening.”   
      
   “The list was provided with no information about the source of data or   
   methodology used to identify these voters,” read the letter, which was   
   signed by a collection of voting rights groups. “It is a criminal offense   
   in Florida to make frivolous challenges, which are subject to misdemeanor   
   penalties for each voter challenged.”   
      
   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 challenging a voter’s eligibility must live in the same county   
   as the voter. In that case, Heim could not challenge 10,000 voters unless   
   he lived in the same county with each of them.   
      
   Brad Ashwell, Florida state director for All Voting is Local Action, told   
   NBC News that allowing thousands of names to be challenged all at once   
   could have the effect of bogging down elections officials chasing false   
   claims of potential voter fraud.   
      
   “It is a voter suppression technique and can bog down the machinery of   
   elections at critical points,” he said. “EagleAI has been on our eye for a   
   while, and it’s frankly disturbing when we saw this email. Not only because   
   the state is sending this list of voters to supervisors, but basically   
   subverting state law on a couple fronts.”   
      
   His group also has a presence in the seven key swing states of Arizona,   
   Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but he says   
   Florida is the first state to have this much movement trying to get EagleAI   
   data inserted into the list maintenance 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   
   has already identified for voter roll maintenance — registrations that have   
   already been removed or are scheduled for removal in accordance with the   
   law.   
      
   The records had also been mislabeled as "Martin County."   
      
   "If I’m being held to a 100% accuracy rate, I believe I should be able to   
   expect the same accuracy," he added.   
      
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