News Roundup: Reinventing the Wheel — But Making It Worse

This week: Problematic replacements for a key voter-roll maintenance tool, efforts to hide redistricting-related plans from the public, and an update from our Wisconsin litigation.

Voting rights

Texas

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Like many targets of the election denial movement, the attacks on a bipartisan voter-roll maintenance tool has profound consequences for election administration — and for access to the ballot.

This week, NPR’s Miles Parks reported on several documents obtained by American Oversight that shed light on how states that abandoned the Electronic Registration Information Center are now scrambling to replace what the partnership had offered them. And as Parks reported, election experts are “deeply skeptical that any of them will be able to fully replicate ERIC.”

Nine conservative-led states have now left the consortium after a sustained campaign by far-right election deniers to discredit ERIC based on conspiracy theories and partisan alarm about ERIC’s requirement for outreach to unregistered voters.
But those states all left without a solid plan to replace ERIC, leading to a “scattershot” effort to establish new cross-state agreements. As one former county clerk told NPR, “These states have decided that instead of using a wheel, they’re going to invent a spherical device that will allow them to easily transport and roll items from A to B.”

For one thing, those cross-state agreements — several of which American Oversight obtained through public records requests — “may lack enough detail to yield reliable results,” Parks reported. But also alarming is the space left for fringe groups and activists to step in.

This includes EagleAI Network, which is software being pushed by the same election deniers who helped build the backlash to ERIC, including Cleta Mitchell. As NBC News and Documented reported recently, the software gives election-fraud vigilantes a new tool for challenging voter registrations.
The NPR story highlights an August email we received from the Texas secretary of state’s office, in which Secretary Jane Nelson shared with her elections staff an article written by Jay Valentine. You might remember Valentine — an election denier who, through his company Fractal, is also trying to capitalize on the void left by states’ departure from ERIC — from our investigation of the partisan election inquiry in Wisconsin.)
Valentine had pitched his technology to Nelson in May, according to emails. The article shared by Nelson in August (using a personal email account) falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen; Nelson’s subject line in the email was “interesting article.”

Wisconsin Update
American Oversight appeared in court again this week in our lawsuit seeking transparency from Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and his secret panel of former state Supreme Court justices, set up to advise on the potential impeachment of Justice Janet Protasiewicz.

On Thursday, the court set another hearing date for Nov. 10 to address the public records litigation. The Dane County District Attorney has until Oct. 25 to move to intervene in the case regarding our claims under the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.
We filed suit last month alleging that any meetings held by Vos’ panel have been in violation of the open meetings statute.
Earlier this week we amended the complaint to include claims under the state’s Open Records Law, asking the court to order the release of public records related to impeachment considerations.
“American Oversight’s litigation has led to key details about the panel’s membership and their recommendations against impeachment coming to light, but there is still much the public doesn’t know about the panel’s work,” said Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director. “We look forward to continuing the fight to ensure that any meetings are held in public view and that the people of Wisconsin have the records to which they are entitled.”

On the Records

Republican efforts to shield communications about redistricting
This week, ProPublica reported on how Republican lawmakers have used claims of legislative privilege to hide information about how they drew new electoral maps — information vital for plaintiffs challenging those maps in court for being discriminatory.

Conservative legislators have succeeded in drawing out those challenges by asserting privilege, by putting outside political operatives and map designers onto state payrolls, and even by enacting new laws to further shield their deliberations from the public.

ProPublica’s Marilyn W. Thompson cited documents obtained by American Oversight that point to this strategy.

One document we obtained contains talking points distributed by the Virginia-based National Republican Redistricting Trust that allude to the danger that court challenges present for potential gerrymandering attempts. “Democrats are sitting back counting the cash they plan to use on their trial lawyers to fund their strategy of endless litigation,” the document reads.
ProPublica also cited legal contracts we obtained from 2021, when the Texas Legislature hired the law firm Butler Snow LLP to work on redistricting.

News Roundup: Reinventing the Wheel — But Making It Worse

On the Records

Other Stories We’re Following

Election Denial and Threats to Democracy

Voting Rights

In the States

LGBTQ Rights

Abortion and Reproductive Rights

Threats to Education

Government Transparency and Public Records Law

Immigration

Trump Accountability