Voting Rights Group Press Officials to Address Tool They Say Could Cancel Voter Registrations

A voting rights group is worried that a new software created in Georgia to make voter registration more accurate could instead cancel out legitimate voters, which they say would undermine voting rights.

EagleAI NETwork created the software to validate, maintain and review election rosters, according to a CNN report. It says it aims to preserve "voter roll accuracy and integrity," and would allow anyone to get "license and credentials" and then review voter registrations themselves.

But groups such as the Brennan Center for Justice are worried that it will lead to legitimate voters being ruled out since the software relies on unreliable information.

“EagleAI is another front on the attacks on elections,” Andrew Garber, a counsel in the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Center, told CNN.

He also called it a “larger plan to move away from responsible voter list maintenance.”

The Brennan Center is concerned that the software will not provide "enough identifying details to confidently match individuals.” They call it the "new antidemocracy tool" on their website.

"Don’t let the 'AI' in the name fool you. There’s nothing intelligent about EagleAI, which appears to be no more than a system that performs data matches based on a database of public voter data amassed by a web scraper," the Brennan Center report reads. "Its own proponents describe it as 'Excel on steroids.'"

The report also urges public officials, including election officials, to "denounce the election denial that gives rise to schemes like EagleAI."

"It’s time to let professional election administrators get back to doing their jobs," they ask.

EagleAI NETwork’s founder John W. “Rick” Richards Jr. called the concerns "total BS" in an interview with the news network, and defended the software's mission to " help validate the voter rolls to improve the integrity of that part of the process."

He explained that the system would use data such as death records from the Social Security Administration, national change-of-address data and even newspaper obituaries.

Richards also said he has already spoken to election officials, but hasn't signed any contracts.

EagleAI NETwork is based in Georgia, one of the states where former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 elections and then proceeded to question the integrity of results.