Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether the Electronic Registration Information Center improperly shared sensitive state motor-vehicle data with outside nonprofits, including an organization funded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The Department of Homeland Security has referred allegations involving the transfer of sensitive state motor-vehicle and voter-related data to the Justice Department, asking federal prosecutors to determine whether a nonprofit used information including Social Security and driver’s license numbers in violation of federal privacy law.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin outlined the concerns in a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche dated Wednesday and released Friday by the White House.
The latest referral focuses on the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a nonprofit used by states to help maintain voter-registration lists.
Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia currently participate in ERIC.
Mullin wrote that the organization disputes any wrongdoing, but DHS believes its handling of motor-vehicle information may raise issues under the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.
ERIC “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 secretary, ERIC encourages states to enter contracts requiring them to disclose information belonging not only to registered voters but also to people who have never registered.
ERIC “lobbies states to sign a contract that requires the disclosure of the private data of individuals who were not registered to vote and therefore certainly could not be in need of voter list maintenance. The data fields disclosed include Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers,” Mullin wrote.
DHS alleges that some of that information was subsequently provided to the Center for Election Innovation and Research, or CEIR, a nonprofit that has received substantial funding from entities connected to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
Mullin argued that the repeated transfer of motor-vehicle information among nongovernmental organizations may fall outside the uses permitted under federal law.
“This sharing and re-sharing of Motor Vehicle Agency data among NGOs may not qualify as a permissible use of motor vehicle data identified in the DPPA,” Mullin wrote. “This category of data regarding potential voters is incredibly valuable to political parties and campaigns.”
An administration official told Just the News that DHS believes at least nine states entered grant arrangements authorizing such transfers.
“While a DOJ investigation could determine the final number of files involved, Homeland Security officials believe at least nine states engaged in the grant agreement authorizing the transfer of the data and those 9 states have over 48 million registered voters,” the official said. “Homeland believes the number transferred could be much higher since the number of individuals in each state’s Motor Vehicle database would exceed the registered voter number because it included motorists who had not registered to vote.”
DHS pointed specifically to a $13 million CEIR grant involving Pennsylvania.
According to the department, the agreement required Pennsylvania to provide motor-vehicle information “originally shared with ERIC, to be used by CEIR to create” lists of people considered eligible but not registered to vote.
Those lists could then be used for voter-registration outreach.
Mullin also told DOJ that DHS has evidence ERIC contacted citizens identified as “eligible or possibly eligible” to vote but who were not registered.
The department further cited emails obtained through a Georgia public-records request indicating that “CEIR was ‘coordinating ERIC [eligible voter] outreach’ which was contacting each individual identified in the motor vehicle file,” Mullin wrote.
That allegation is significant because ERIC has maintained that sharing such information with CEIR was permitted under the research exception contained in federal motor-vehicle privacy law.
The statutory exception cited by ERIC contains restrictions requiring that personal information not be published, redisclosed or used to contact individuals.
DHS is asking DOJ to determine whether the alleged outreach and data-sharing practices crossed that legal line.
A Trump administration official said potential Justice Department responses could include a cease-and-desist action against ERIC, civil or other legal penalties, or examination of whether any conduct affected the organization’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.
The newest referral follows an earlier DHS submission to the Justice Department in September 2025.
Mullin said the department first raised concerns about ERIC with DOJ at that time, although it remains unclear what action, if any, federal prosecutors took in response.
The controversy traces in part to election-related grants distributed during the 2020 presidential cycle.
Both ERIC and CEIR were founded and organized by David Becker, a former government attorney who later served as a director at the progressive organization People for the American Way.
Ahead of the 2020 election, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative provided more than $70 million to CEIR, according to Mullin’s letter.
Zuckerberg and Chan ultimately provided more than $400 million to CEIR and the Center for Tech & Civic Life to support state and local election administration during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When CEIR announced the funding in October 2020, the organization explicitly attributed the support to both Zuckerberg and Chan under the headline, “Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Increase Support for Safe and Reliable Voting.”
CEIR then distributed grants through its 2020 Voter Education Grant Program, which it said was intended to “provide nonpartisan, accurate, and official voting information to the public.”
Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., applied for and accepted funding from the program that year.
ERIC and CEIR later drew additional scrutiny in 2022 when the Thomas More Society filed lawsuits involving election agencies in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The organization alleged that the states violated the Help America Vote Act by sharing information with third parties even though the federal law requires states to maintain accurate lists of registered and unregistered voters.
The outcomes of those early cases were not clear from the material cited by DHS.
The Justice Department must now determine whether the newer allegations involving motor-vehicle records, voter-registration outreach and nonprofit data sharing establish violations of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act or other federal laws.
For DHS, the central issue is not merely whether states shared information with ERIC, but whether sensitive personal data was subsequently transferred and used for purposes that exceeded the limited exceptions permitted by federal privacy statutes.
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