Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Can DOJ access states' voter data? ANTI-VOTING RIGHTS GROUPS THREATEN VOTING!

Wednesday, August 6

Welcome back to the latest edition of Eye On The Right. You’ll notice things look a little different in this week’s newsletter: We’re mixing it up a bit, based on your feedback. Don’t worry, the content will be the same — news, updates and musings on the right-wing groups and figures challenging voting rights and working to thwart democracy.

As always, thanks for reading.

— Matt Cohen, Senior Reporter

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Can DOJ access states’ voter data? It’s complicated

For months, states have received unusual letters and emails from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) demanding access to voter registration rolls and making wide-ranging requests for information to prove compliance with federal voting laws.
The effort is raising major alarm among state election officials and voting rights experts. “I think that should concern all Americans,” David Becker, a former trial attorney in DOJ’s voting section, told me. “Because it appears the Justice Department is trying to acquire sensitive information on all Americans for who knows what purpose, with very, very questionable statutory authority.”
But it’s not clear that DOJ has a right to access state voter data — even in states where that data is public. And DOJ might not be following the proper legal channels to obtain sensitive voter data. Read my deep dive here.

True the Vote’s latest war is… with its own tech

I had not heard much from the anti-voting group True the Vote this year but a recent email from its founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, finally broke the silence about why: Since late 2024, the organization has not been able to figure out how to send email blasts to its followers. Engelbrecht became aware of this problem when True the Vote sent out a fundraising blast for the group’s 15th anniversary, only for it to raise precisely $0.
“For months now, we’ve been fighting a quiet war on the tech front,” Engelbrecht wrote. “Our email delivery has been throttled. Our platforms have continued to fail without explanation. Despite our best efforts — audits, protocol updates, expert consultations — the problems persist. In fact, they’ve grown worse.”
True the Vote, as a reminder, is the anti-voting group at the center of a major 2020 voter intimidation lawsuit in Georgia. The group is also known for developing IV3 — its own “election integrity” app to purge state voter rolls, which it boasts as a cutting-edge digital tool.
Given all that, I find it funny that an election denial group whose major claim is developing a digital app that supposedly keeps a nationwide database of voter registration is struggling with… sending out emails.

Cleta Mitchell is pushing Congress to investigate a bogus 2020 election conspiracy

The right-wing voting conspiracy group The Election Research Institute (ERI) released a report last week pushing a new bonkers conspiracy: Iran hacked Alaska’s elections in 2020 leading to a “significant increase in uniformed and overseas ballots.” The bogus report blatantly misinterprets a 2020 CISA report that identified Iran as a “threat actor” targeting state election websites.

ERI is run by Heather Honey, an election denier who also runs Pennsylvania Fair Elections — a state partner of the Cleta Mitchell-led Election Integrity Network (EIN).
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Mitchell wants Congress to investigate the absurd theories in ERI’s latest report. She told the right-wing outlet Just the News that she wants Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, to take up the matter.