A conservative activist challenged 10,000 names of Florida voters. Only 1 was in Polk
Polk County is virtually unaffected by a state directive to examine the status of voters on a controversial list compiled by a conservative activist.
The owner of EagleAI, a privately sourced data platform, submitted nearly 10,000 names of Florida voters whose eligibility he questioned in an email to a high-ranking election official, NBC News reported last week.
Maria Matthews, director of the Florida Division of Elections, forwarded the names to county supervisors of elections in a May 15 email, directing them to “take action,” NBC News reported. Matthews wrote that the list included voters potentially registered in more than one state, saying it was provided by “a concerned citizen.”
Polk County Supervisors of Elections Lori Edwards said Tuesday that only one of the 9,926 registered voters on the list resides in Polk County. Edwards’ office had already shifted the voter to inactive status in 2022 after postal records indicated they had moved to another state, she said.
The May 3 email to Matthews came from Dan Heim, a Florida-based activist who has made unfounded claims of voter fraud, NBC News reported. Heim is also associated with Defend Florida, a conservative group that conducted a review of voter rolls in many Florida counties in 2021.
The group said that it found discrepancies on 22% of ballots statewide and 27% in Polk County cast in the 2020 election. At the time, Edwards said that Defend Florida appeared to be inspecting outdated voter lists. Defend Florida’s partner organizations included Citizens Defending Freedom, a conservative political outfit founded in Polk County.
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EagleAI is affiliated with Election Integrity Network, a group founded by Cleta Mitchell, a former election lawyer for former President Donald Trump and a central figure in his efforts to upend the results of the 2020 election, NBC News reported.
Leaders of more than two dozen progressive organizations sent a letter Friday to Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd expressing concern over the email Matthews sent to elections supervisors, calling EagleAI “an unreliable platform.” Signees included Florida leaders of the NAACP, ACLU, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters.
Florida previously used an established voter list maintenance program, the Electronic Registration Information Center but withdrew its membership last year amid criticism of the program from conservative groups.
In the absence of the ERIC database, Edwards said that her office relies on notifications from a voter or from election offices in other states that a voter from Polk County has registered there. The office also responds to returned mail indicating a voter has moved by beginning the process of making the voter inactive, she said.
Gary White can be reached at [email protected] or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: No impact in Polk County from controversial review of voter rolls