The Justice Department is demanding records from two election nonprofits tied to Mark Zuckerberg after Homeland Security flagged possible privacy law violations involving millions of Americans’ motor vehicle data.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward sent letters dated Sept. 30 to the Electronic Registration Information Center and the Center for Election Innovation and Research, seeking a full accounting of how the groups handled personal information drawn from state motor vehicle departments.
Just the News reported that the demands follow a Homeland Security referral raising alarms that the arrangement may have violated the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, the federal law that restricts how states and others can use and share motor vehicle records that often include Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.
ERIC helps member states maintain voter rolls and counts 27 states plus the District of Columbia among its members. CEIR received protected motor vehicle registration data from ERIC and distributed grants to state election officials. Both groups now face federal scrutiny over whether that data stayed inside lawful government uses or spilled into outreach that officials call partisan.
In the letter to ERIC, Woodward made the department’s concern plain.
"Even apart from the issue of disclosure to third parties, the scope of ERIC's own use of DPPA-protected personal information remains unclear. Although using such information in furtherance of government functions may be a permitted use, using protected information for certain partisan purposes is not a government function and is thus not permitted under the DPPA, regardless of whether a state consents,"
Woodward wrote. A nearly identical letter went to CEIR. The department asked both groups for records on the services they provide members, the research they conduct, their correspondence with state motor vehicle departments, and any sharing or disclosure of information obtained from those departments.
Homeland Security had already asked the Justice Department to look at whether sensitive state voter data, including Social Security and driver’s license numbers, moved to the two organizations in ways that broke federal privacy rules. The White House Government Transparency Task Force later made that referral public.
A Homeland Security official identified in the reporting as Mullin argued that ERIC exposes vast amounts of private data beyond government control.
"exposes millions of citizens’ sensitive private data to unknown contractors, subcontractors and agents of ERIC, potentially in violation of the DPPA,"
Mullin wrote, according to the account of the referral. Mullin also described how ERIC presses states into contracts that force disclosure of private data on people who never registered to vote and therefore could not need ordinary voter-list maintenance. Those fields, Mullin said, include Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.
ERIC has pointed to a research exception in federal law. Homeland Security’s position is that the exception bars publishing, re-disclosing, or using the personal information to contact individuals. Mullin said the agency has evidence ERIC contacted “eligible or possibly eligible” citizens who were not registered to vote. Public-records emails from Georgia, Mullin added, showed CEIR “coordinating ERIC [eligible voter] outreach” that contacted each person identified in the motor vehicle file.
An administration official told Just the News that Homeland Security officials believe at least nine states entered grant agreements authorizing the data transfer, and that those nine states alone have more than 48 million registered voters. The same official said the true number of files could run much higher because motor vehicle databases also hold motorists who never registered to vote. A formal Justice Department review, the official noted, could settle the final count.
CEIR’s funding trail runs straight through the foundation tied to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Mullin’s letter stated the foundation provided more than $70 million to CEIR ahead of the 2020 election. Reporting on the same period put the foundation’s combined outlay to CEIR and the Center for Tech & Civic Life at more than $400 million, money that underwrote grants to local and state election officials.
In October 2020, CEIR announced the support under the heading “Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Increase Support for Safe and Reliable Voting.” The group described its grants as aimed at providing “nonpartisan, accurate, and official voting information to the public.” Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., applied for and accepted CEIR grant funds that year.
Pennsylvania’s $13 million CEIR grant offers a concrete example of the data flow. Under the grant terms described in the Homeland Security referral, the state had to turn over motor vehicle data originally shared with ERIC so CEIR could build lists of eligible but unregistered voters for outreach. That is the same pipeline now under Justice Department review.
David Becker, a former government lawyer, founded and organized both ERIC and CEIR. He later became a director at People for the American Way, a progressive group whose website frames its mission against “Donald Trump’s MAGA movement” and the “private interests of Musk and other billionaires.” The Justice Department letters do not charge anyone with a crime. They demand records. Yet the sequence is clear: private foundation cash, state motor vehicle files that reach beyond registered voters, outreach to unregistered citizens, and now federal privacy questions that state consent alone cannot erase.
Taxpayers and lawful voters have a right to know who touched their Social Security numbers and driver’s license data, for what purpose, and under what legal shield. When nonprofits bankrolled by tech billionaires sit between state DMVs and political outreach, the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act is not a technicality. It is the line that keeps government functions from becoming a private political tool.
Americans did not hand over their motor vehicle records so outside groups could build contact lists. The Justice Department is right to demand the paper trail.
