Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is once again drawing political scrutiny — this time over election-related activity from 2020 that his critics say deserves a fresh look.
Attorney General Todd Blanche has been alerted by the Department of Homeland Security to past work by election activist organizations, including the Center for Election Innovation and Research, known as CEIR, a group funded by Zuckerberg.
New DHS disclosures are prompting renewed questions about whether state officials improperly provided sensitive motor-vehicle information to a private organization backed by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan during a large-scale voter outreach effort before the 2020 election.
In a September 2 letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin urged the Justice Department to examine possible violations of the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act involving the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, and CEIR.
So states were sharing personal data with Mark Zuckerberg’s $400 million operation to identify unregistered voters ahead of 2020 election in apparent violation of federal law. More interesting findings in latest disclosures by DHS… pic.twitter.com/ZzFpCuDrer
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) September 4, 2026
The matter had already been sent to the Justice Department once before, but Mullin is now asking the newly confirmed attorney general to revisit it.
The dispute centers on ERIC’s handling of data submitted by member states. ERIC receives voter registration files and motor-vehicle records, then cross-checks those databases to flag outdated registrations, deceased voters and residents who appear eligible to vote but are not registered. The organization says its work is intended to strengthen voter-roll accuracy while helping eligible citizens register.
DHS, however, says the sensitive information may not have stayed solely within ERIC’s control.
“Prior to the 2020 election, ERIC shared that sensitive, protected motor-vehicle data with at least one other private organization,” Mullin wrote.
That organization was CEIR, which received tens of millions of dollars from Zuckerberg and Chan for election-related activities in 2020. Mullin’s letter puts the amount at more than $70 million, while CEIR has said it received nearly $65 million through its Voter Education Grant Program.
DHS says the information was connected to lists of “Eligible But Unregistered,” or EBU, voters — people identified by comparing state voter rolls with motor-vehicle records and then contacted with information encouraging them to register.
“This sharing and resharing of Motor Vehicle Agency data among NGOs may not qualify as a permissible use of motor-vehicle data identified in the DPPA,” Mullin wrote, adding that information about potential voters is “incredibly valuable to political parties and campaigns.”
Pennsylvania is one example cited by DHS. The state received approximately $13 million from CEIR in 2020.
According to Mullin, the grant agreement required Pennsylvania to cooperate with CEIR, “including providing data, as CEIR reasonably requests.”
DHS says that included state motor-vehicle information originally shared with ERIC and subsequently used by CEIR to create EBU lists for voter outreach.
ERIC maintains that its use of state information complies with federal law and describes itself as a membership organization created and governed by state election officials. It says member states securely submit voter-registration and motor-vehicle data, which ERIC uses to produce reports that states can use to maintain voter rolls and contact potentially eligible unregistered residents.
DHS, however, raises additional questions about how citizenship information is handled. According to Mullin’s letter, ERIC’s model contract requires participating states to provide “all licensing or identification records from motor vehicle departments” at least every 60 days. Yet the agreement also prohibits states from transmitting records containing information indicating that someone is a noncitizen.
Why that particular provision is there, given it is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, is a bit of a head-scratcher. But it looks bad.
Mullin pointed to Colorado’s 2022 voter-registration mailing as an example of the potential problem. Approximately 30,000 noncitizens erroneously received voter-registration notices from the Colorado secretary of state’s office. Colorado officials said safeguards were in place to prevent ineligible people from registering and blamed the mailings on a database error.
This is the “trust me, bro” response that Americans get far too often from blue state officials. We don’t trust you. That is the whole point of a constitutional republic.
DHS argues it illustrates a potential weakness in using motor-vehicle records to identify eligible voters when citizenship information isn’t included in the data being transmitted.
The new disclosure adds another layer to the long-running controversy over privately funded election administration in 2020. Zuckerberg and Chan provided roughly $400 million to nonprofits involved in election-related programs that year, with most of the money going to CEIR and the Center for Tech and Civic Life.
CEIR says its grants supported nonpartisan voter education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics have pointed out that the money actually went toward partisan electioneering.
Mullin’s referral now presents DOJ with a narrower legal question: whether protected state motor-vehicle information moved between states and private nonprofits in ways permitted by federal privacy law.
DHS says it raised the matter with DOJ officials as far back as September 2025. More than a year later, the department is putting it back on the attorney general’s desk.
The question now is whether DOJ agrees that a federal privacy line was crossed — and, if so, exactly how many states participated in the data-sharing breach.
Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote. It’s common sense, yet Democrats are spreading lies about the impact of such a measure.
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