Background: Eagle AI was formed in Georgia by retired physician Rick Richards and is backed by Cleta Mitchell, the Conservative Partnership Institute, and the Election Integrity Network. Eagle AI is fully operational in Georgia and is already being used to generate challenges, with state-specific platforms also operative in Nevada and Florida. Rollout has been clunkier in states including North Carolina, Texas, and Colorado. It is being tested and deployed through EIN chapters.

Strategy: Eagle AI’s activist-facing platform’s algorithm flags registrations—like a person registered at a non-residential address, or whose name appears on an NCOA list or newspaper obituary—which EIN activists from across the country manually review to develop voter challenges. However, in addition to helping activists generate voter challenges, Eagle AI is also pitching its services to state and county officials as a way to help process those challenges and review registrations. Columbia County, Georgia agreed to a contract with Eagle AI in December 2023, although Richards has yet to counter-sign the contract, perhaps because of concerns that doing so would violate Georgia’s ban on private support for election administration. In Texas, the May 2023 legislation that removed Texas from ERIC directs the Secretary of State to work with other states on an alternative, or to "identify and contract with the provider of a private sector data system" that costs less than $100,000, which aligns with the low-cost pitch that Richards had been making to public officials (although Texas has not yet signed a contract with Eagle AI.) Richards has said that he wants public contracts in order to obtain access to non-public data. As of June 2024, Eagle AI has begun collaborating with a project called “Citizen AG,,” led by attorney Mike Yoder and right-wing social media influencers, which claims to be laying the groundwork for lawsuits against counties that decline to process Eagle AI’s mass voter challenges to their satisfaction.

Method: Eagle AI’s software draws from public voter registration data, business records, the third-party “True NCOA” change of address database, newspaper obituaries, "Google scrapes" and other data from unspecified sources to build a dashboard for grassroots activists to conduct their own “list maintenance.” Eagle AI also interfaces with VoteRef to identify alleged registrations in multiple states. The platform’s algorithm flags registrations in particular categories which EIN activists from across the country manually review, and then corroborate with supporting information (such as a Google Street View image showing an apparent non-residential address, or a screenshot of a newspaper obituary). Eagle AI then automatically populates the challenge forms with the information and supporting evidence, and a local volunteer emails the challenges to their local elections board. Activists in some states have used the program differently: In Florida, an EIN activist and Eagle AI’s lead for the state, Dan Heim, submitted a list of 10,000 voters generated by Eagle AI to the state’s chief elections official, who then forwarded it to local officials. In Nevada, activists are using Eagle AI to generate walk lists for door-to-door canvassing, with the accumulated evidence then used in support of voter challenges.

The images below are from an EagleAI presentation, and show the records available and the user dashboard for challenges.

In some states, Eagle AI has had implementation struggles. A newly-onboarded Eagle AI team with the Colorado Institute for Fair Elections (an EIN chapter) says in its March newsletter that “Their implementation has (and continues to have) growing pains with significant and impressive improvements.” In their April newsletter, COIFFE stated that the national team “continues to update and improve their program,” citing Richards’ personal involvement. In states like North Carolina and Texas, EIN chapters have also complained about Eagle AI’s slow rollout or limited functionality in their states, and are using or considering other programs, like IV3 or Check My Vote.

Recruitment: Eagle AI is supported by Cleta Mitchell, and its users are largely recruited through national EIN working groups and state EIN chapters.

Background: True the Vote formed in 2009 and is co-led by Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips. It is a long-time player in the voter suppression space, and has previously orchestrated mass challenges in Georgia. True the Vote has a lengthy history of spreading unsubstantiated election conspiracies to undermine trust in elections, and has little credibility, even among other election deniers. Starting in 2022, True the Vote created a database/app called IV3, which allows users to challenge registrations using voter roll data. True the Vote launched the first IV3 training of the 2024 cycle in early April 2024, and claimed 872 attendees at the first meeting.

Strategy: IV3 is primarily aimed at helping activists generate voter challenges remotely. The program identifies “Records for Review,” which surfaces records that meet their criteria for a challenge—such as a voter’s registration address differing from their USPS permanent address—and users then review the records and generate a voter challenge. True the Vote expressly tells users not to “use IV3 data to contact or otherwise track down voters. Doing so is a direct violation of the IV3 Terms of Service and User Agreement and will result in your volunteer account being immediately shut down.” It does not appear that IV3 is marketing its services to state or local officials.

Method:

Users must verify their identity with True the Vote’s team before onboarding into the database. Users are then directed to the IV3 login page and their dashboard. The images below are from an IV3 walkthrough video, and illustrate the steps involved in creating a list of challenges through IV3.

Users are first directed to the page “IV3 Identified Records for Review,” which surfaces records that meet True the Vote’s criteria for a challenge. This data is sourced from state voter rolls and USPS data from NCOALink and limited to a users’ county. They plan to update their data after primaries. Users conduct further research, such as using a Google Maps plug-in to allow users to look at addresses. A notes section allows users to include further information, such as the date of address change.

True the Vote advises “challenging all statuses except for canceled.” If a user selects “challenge this record,” the file is then sorted into the user’s list of records to submit to the state and an additional text box can be filled out with justifications. Users can then “choose which challenges you want downloaded based on a challenged date or date range.”

True the Vote provides IV3 users with a template letter for submitting challenges; the letter does not mention that the challenges were generated by True the Vote/IV3. Users are also given a spreadsheet detailing the challenge laws in their state. In addition to the letter and state-directed forms, users are encouraged to submit a supporting document that “explains in detail where IV3 is sourcing their data from.

Users can also look up data ad-hoc, such as searching by address or voter name. However, the IV3 help desk advises users not to contact or track down voters.

Judging by social media posts from onboarded users, IV3 is operational in several states, including NY, WA, CA, and TX. For example, a New York-based group, Project Civica, has indicated that they are assisting True The Vote with implementation.

Recruitment: True the Vote has a dedicated grassroots following and a large social media presence, and users appear to be largely drawn from True the Vote’s existing supporters and mailing list. True the Vote’s Latino outreach project, Voto Honesto, is also promoting IV3. True the Vote set up a booth at Trump’s May 11, 2024 rally in Wildwood, New Jersey to promote IV3 and collect testimonials. Perhaps as a result of True the Vote’s grassroots support and Eagle AI’s comparatively slow rollout, EIN coalitions in states like Texas have also discussed using IV3 to develop voter challenges.

Background: Check My Vote was founded in 2023 by Michigan residents Phani Mantravadi and Tim Vetter. It evolved out of data analysis Mantravadi and Vetter performed for the MIGOP under former chair Kristina Karamo. CMV is loosely affiliated with the Michigan EIN chapter, with activists from that chapter using Check My Vote to create “walk lists” and conduct door-to-door canvassing. Check My Vote has more recently become active in other states, and has websites for Ohio and New Mexico in addition to the original Michigan-focused project. (In an April 21, 2024 Telegram post, Mantravadi said that Vetter would be parting ways with the project.)

Strategy: CMV focuses on flagging “high-registration” addresses—that is, addresses associated with multiple voter records in the qualified voter file—as suspicious to conduct mass challenges of voter registrations. They claim their purpose is “to put voter-roll management in the hands of American citizens [by] providing helpful analysis and tools to engage with volunteers and elected clerks…to support each other in identifying and removing irregularities from your state’s voter rolls continually.” CMV also focuses on flagging data errors, like missing apartment numbers. In Michigan, EIN activists draw from the CMV database to conduct door-to-door canvassing and collect affidavits to support voter challenges. It is not known whether activists in other states are similarly using CMV to generate walk lists for canvassing. CMV has described creating separate dashboards for use by election clerks.

Method: Check My Vote hosts publicly available voter rolls on their site. After watching training videos, users are directed to review a jurisdiction’s identified “irregularities,” which range from “non-standard apartment #s” to registrations from business addresses. Users are encouraged to “interact with State residents to confirm” (i.e., conduct canvassing), flag registrations they think are suspicious, create affidavits that support their challenges, and submit them through a proxy volunteer in the target jurisdiction, using templates provided by CMV. Per CMV’s website, their data sources include state voter files, known USPS/UPS office addresses, NCOA data, volunteer flags, and the MELISSA national address database.

The images below are from a CMV training presentation, and illustrate how to review registrations:

Other training materials describe how CMV can be used to construct a canvassing list:

Recruitment: In Michigan, CMV appears to have largely recruited users from the Michigan EIN chapter. Mantravadi and Vetter regularly present on EIN calls, training materials for the canvassing effort describe a joint project between CMV and the EIN chapter, and the Michigan EIN blog has touted the project. In Ohio, a representative of that state’s EIN chapter, Allison Nickolai, is also active in recruiting users. Mantravadi and Vetter were also featured panelists at an August 2023 summit organized by Mike Lindell, and their work has been featured in election denier outlets like The Federalist and Gateway Pundit.

Background: The People’s Audit (TPA) was founded following the 2020 election by Kris Jurski, a self-described entrepreneur in Florida. Jurski originally created TPA to analyze Florida’s voter rolls, but the group is now also active in Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia, and says it is seeking data for other states. Jurski is a frequent speaker on fringe election denial podcasts, speaking with David Clements, Joe Oltmann, and Joe Hoft. Jurski has also appeared on Roger Stone’s StoneZone show and at Mike Lindell’s 2023 Election Summit. TPA is specifically motivated by conspiracy theories about registrations at “undeliverable addresses,” with Jurski telling the Epoch Times in 2022 that “the whole game is to generate undeliverable ballots—a portion of which are somehow being obtained and voted by somebody else.”

Strategy: Jurski’s group obtains and uses voter roll data to create challenges. He isn’t marketing his tool to election officials, saying “I find it very very unusual for anybody to want to sell the state another piece of software.” TPA fundraises for the purchase of state voter rolls and subscriptions to monthly data releases that users can then investigate to find irregularities in registrations. TPA encourages canvassing: “You can both physically and digitally canvass an address to see if the home exists.”

Method: TPA requests voter roll data and uses CASS verification (an address accuracy system developed by USPS and often used by online vendors) to check addresses, and the USPS’s NCOA database to track voters. Jurski claims that third-party NCOA vendors (like those used by Eagle AI) are unreliable due to their lack of CASS verification, and encourages use of USPS’s data. TPA then creates a “monthly maintenance report” that shows changes in voter registration from month-to-month, likely using a monthly update service subscription. The admin dashboard for their North Carolina pilot is shown here:

Residents of Texas, Florida, and North Carolina can check their addresses on front-facing state-specific sites to “check the public record on your past voting history and if there [is] anyone else registered to vote at your home.”

In addition to generating challenges, TPA has a particular focus on helping to investigate—or generate—election conspiracy theories. The group’s focus on identifying undeliverable addresses stems from Jurski’s longstanding belief that election officials in Lake County, Florida issued ballots to fictitious/undeliverable addresses on “Red Belly Road” before changing them to legitimate addresses in the record after the election. Jurski’s theory is that an unknown insider who is sending mail-in ballots to an undeliverable address can “possibly harvest a ballot at the post office or somewhere else, and then basically use it to vote on that person's behalf.” TPA claims to specialize in identifying other “Red Belly Roads” and alleged irregular registrations.

Recruitment: TPA operates largely through Telegram, where election denial influencers such as The Lone Raccoon and Seth Keshel promote Jurski’s efforts. Jurski’s appearances on fringe right-wing podcasts also direct people to TPA.

Background: Look Ahead America was founded in 2017 by Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign staffer. It has drawn attention for misleading mailers, an error-filled report alleging fraud in Georgia’s 2020 election, and for supporting defendants facing charges from the January 6th insurrection, but it also has been involved in voter challenges. Look Ahead America published a voter challenge guide last cycle, and the group and its volunteers have submitted challenges and fraud allegations in numerous states, including Missouri, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and more. The group has not developed a unique voter challenge platform, but instead appears to rely on sources like VoteRef to support allegations of double-registrations, and NCOA for address changes. Look Ahead America’s 2022 tax filing shows that half of the group’s overall spending went to Braynard and his consulting firm.

Strategy: In the 2022 cycle, Look Ahead America offered activists in battleground states a “guide to challenging ballots before & after they are cast” and some data. The guide includes state-specific challenge information and directs activists to use platforms like VoteRef to conduct research in support of voter challenges. In Georgia, one activist challenged 10,500 registrations using Look Ahead America guidance, and the group issued a press release boasting of challenges filed by its volunteers. For 2024, the group has claimed that “We will launch an effort to clean the voter rolls in critical [states] ahead of the 2024 General Election and put data in the hands of volunteers to challenge possibly illegitimate votes at the local level.” It is not clear whether the group has updated its 2022 guidance for voter challenges. The group’s research director, Ian Camacho, has personally filed challenges in states like Missouri and Texas, citing VoteRef and NCOA in support of the challenges. He has also inquired about challenges filed by “Totes Legit Votes,” an anonymous personality who has filed challenges in several states relying on the VoteRef database.

Method: The 2022 challenge guide focused on nine states (AZ, FL, GA, NV, NC, OH, PA, VA, WI) and directed volunteers to file challenges both before and after the election, though “the focus primarily should be on challenging voters before an election.” The basic information that LAA directs volunteers to include in a challenge are the voter’s ID number, name, and USPS permanent address, as well as any information justifying a challenge that can be found through public records and social media. The guidance is loose, directing volunteers to VoteRef and other sites that can be used to lookup people, addresses, and registration information. The organization also offered to share data with activists who register with the group and verified their information. LAA’s website encouraged their 2022 Ballot Challenge Program volunteers to contact county boards to find specific guidance on challenges, since “counties often vary in how they carry out the law and how they use discretion.” LAA does not appear to advise canvassing, focusing instead on open-source techniques and online services.

Recruitment: Look Ahead America has a dedicated grassroots following, and the group claimed to provide “thousands” of volunteers with challenge guidance in the 2022 cycle.

Background: The Voter Reference Foundation, or “VoteRef” has created a publicly-available database of voting records from 32 states that allows amateur sleuths to conduct “investigations” and potentially file voter challenges. It is not itself a nonprofit, but is instead a project of Restoration of America, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit largely funded by right-wing billionaire Dick Uihlein. VoteRef’s executive director is Gina Swoboda, a former Trump campaign official who in January became the chair of the Arizona Republican Party. Swoboda is also a close ally of Cleta Mitchell, and attended a private event organized by Mitchell in June 2022 to persuade Secretaries of State to cut ties with ERIC.

Strategy: VoteRef purchases state voter rolls and publishes them on a searchable website. The organization itself doesn’t explicitly tell activists how to use the information. In 2021 and 2022, the group would issue reports of “discrepancies” between the number of voters and the number of ballots cast in particular states, “despite being warned by state election officials that its findings were ‘fundamentally incorrect,’” but it now largely appears to be relying on MAGA activists to conduct their own analyses. In states like Pennsylvania, officials have asserted that the group is threatening voter privacy by publishing names, birth dates, and street addresses online, and New Mexico has argued that such publication violates statutes that limit how voter data may be used. In response, VoteRef has filed lawsuits in multiple states to gain access to the voter rolls, and they are often prevailing.

Method: VoteRef obtains voter rolls from 32 states on a periodic basis and posts them online. In 2024, VoteRef announced that it would also be tracking sent and returned absentee ballots. The 2022 tax return for VoteRef’s parent organization, Restoration of America, shows the group spent $2.4 million on data contract expenses that year, and hired a new “director of data management” at a six-figure salary. It appears that at least some of VoteRef’s data acquisition comes from groups associated with a notorious “pink slime” network of biased local news called Metric Media. Litigation in New Mexico revealed that a Metric Media affiliate called Local Labs obtained the state’s voter rolls on VoteRef’s behalf, and other documents show that Local Labs helped build functionality for VoteRef’s website. In 2022, VoteRef’s parent organization paid $3.28 million to a group that appears to share an address with Local Labs.

Recruitment: Swoboda gave VoteRef trainings at several kickoff summits organized by the Election Integrity Network in 2022 and has also presented on EIN organizing calls. She also is closely tied to other right-wing organizations, like Turning Point Action, and is a regular on far-right podcasts like Steve Bannon’s War Room, and decentralized activists around the country have been using VoteRef to conduct amateur searches for fraud and irregularities.

Background: The PigPen Project is hosted by the Citizen Outreach Foundation, which was formed in 1992. The president of the PigPen Project is Chuck Muth, and its vice president is Dan Burdish; both are longtime GOP activists, and both previously served as executive directors of the Nevada Republican party. Burdish is active in the Election Integrity Network and has described how the group has used Eagle AI and PigPen’s own software system to identify potential double registrations and moves, and then conducted in-person, door-to-door canvassing to generate voter challenges. The group has also described working with landlords to gather affidavits from apartment owners who claim that voters registered at their buildings are not on the lease. There are endorsements on PigPen Project’s website from True the Vote’s co-founder Gregg Philips and from white supremacist Paul Nehlen.

Strategy: The PigPen Project’s website states that “unless the Nevada Legislature changes the new mail-in ballot election law, the best way to reduce the potential for voting fraud is to clean up the voter lists so that ballots aren’t mailed out to people who shouldn’t be getting them. That is the goal of the Pigpen Project.”As stated on their website, their aims include:

• “Educating the public on the dangers of “dirty” voter lists

• Researching databases to “red flag” voters registered at vacant lots, commercial addresses, PO boxes, abandoned houses, or have moved or died

• Creating a master database of suspected inaccurate voter registrations

• Organizing “boots on the ground” to verify accuracy of voter file records

• Work with local election officials to find out exactly what they require to remove ineligible voters from the voter lists

• Develop protocols for volunteers to obtain actionable evidence for successfully challenging a voter’s eligibility

• Coordinate communications with various groups and individuals engaged in election security efforts”

Method: The group claims to have developed their own software system, and has also drawn from Eagle AI to identify “suspicious” registrations, such as potential double registrations and moves. (The New York Times reported that PigPen used VoteRef data, but the group said it has never heard of VoteRef.) It then conducts in-person, door-to-door canvassing as part of their “Registration Verification Task Force.” Through those canvassing efforts, the group developed “Residency Discrepancy Reports” that it submitted to the Clark County Registrar. The group has also described working with landlords to gather affidavits from apartment owners who claim that voters registered at their buildings are not on the lease

In Nevada, voters may only challenge another voter’s registration between the 30th and 25th day before the election. They can only challenge one voter per filing, in the same precinct, and based on personal knowledge. PigPen Project may be attempting to circumvent this procedure by working directly with county clerks to flag use “the differing procedures and processes used by local officials to remove invalid registrations in each of the state’s 17 counties.” In June 2024, the Washoe County Clerk rejected a PigPen effort to sidestep voter challenge procedures.

Background: The “North of 29 Wisconsin Election Reform Movement” was founded by Stephanie Forrer-Harbridge, who also created Patriots United in Faith Family & Freedom. Harbridge also leads Mike Lindell’s Cause of America-Wisconsin. Harbridge believes that elections in Wisconsin are stolen through the mostly rural counties “North of 29” – a reference to Highway 29, which cuts across the northern part of the state between Green Bay and Minneapolis. After the 2022 gubernatorial election, Forrer-Harbridge requested that election denier Douglas Frank visit Wisconsin and aid her group, and Frank visited multiple towns in Wisconsin and conducted trainings in July 2023, including an event with election deniers Joe Oltmann, David Clements, and former Wisconsin State Assembly member Timothy Ramthun. Lindell is a close ally of North of 29, with a November 2023 newsletter noting that North of 29’s work “is being organized with the help of Mike Lindell in all 72 Counties in Wisconsin.” Harbridge’s husband is running for Wisconsin State Assembly, and endorsements include Frank and Lindell.

Strategy: The group is engaging in door-to-door canvassing to investigate “fraudulent votes” and collecting affidavits from residents, but it is not apparent that they are using their findings to file formal voter challenges. Scott Harbridge said on a recent Rumble show (starting at 6:08) that “we’ve canvassed 31 out of 72 counties” and then generally presented the data to “county clerks and the sheriffs.” He said the goal of the canvassing campaign is to “bring awareness to people and we're also hoping that some of the sheriffs will get on board and maybe get some prosecutions when there’s been fraudulent votes.” The group has also stated that the affidavits can “possibly be used as evidence in a court of law" to “help scrub Wisconsin’s voter rolls.”

Method:

A July 2023 newsletter circulated on Telegram details the canvassing operations in Wisconsin: after signing an NDA, a volunteer attends a training held by Stephanie or another North of 29 member. Volunteers are then given “walk books” of “phantom voters,” which includes voters who’ve allegedly moved but may have voted at their prior address. After speaking to property owners at suspected “phantom voter” locations, the voter is directed to fill out an affidavit. At least some of the data used appears to come from Dr. Frank; for example, a September 2023 event flier stated that activists had been “canvassing Polk County with data obtained from Dr. Douglas Frank,” and on May 4th, 2024 Frank presented “preliminary North of 29 voter roll canvassing results” in Wilson, WI.

Background: In 2022, the group “Iowa Canvassing” prompted hundreds of challenges in Linn County and Black Hawk County. In 2023, Iowa Canvassing challenged 939 voters in Linn County. Iowa Canvassing is active on Telegram and on Facebook. They are also associated with Douglas Frank. A member of Iowa Canvassing made a public comment against ranked-choice voting in February, 2024, and urged other election changes that same month. Iowa Canvassing issued “calls to action” in support of election bills as recently as March 2024. ““It’s not enough…this is just a drop in the bucket,” Laura Gillespie of an Iowa Canvassing volunteer group on the between 3,000 and 4,000 registrations challenged in Iowa since August” (2023).

Strategy: Iowa Canvassing conducts “data research, door-to-door canvassing and volunteering at the polls.” They encourage voter challenges, which can be filed by any qualified voter from the same county until 70 days before an election.

Method: In July 2023, Iowa Canvassing members provided officials with “with a list of registered voters’ addresses and the addresses where their forwarding mail was being sent.” This indicates that they are relying on voter rolls plus an NCOA database. Iowa voter roll data is available on VoteRef.