Election vigilantes pose grave threat to 2024 vote: expert

Republicans have an arsenal of tools – including artificial intelligence and vigilante activists – to make it harder to vote and easier to cheat in next year's election, according to a voting rights expert.

Georgia's GOP-backed anti-voting law makes it easier for partisan vigilantes to challenge voters en masse, and conservative groups are now using third-party groups to challenge voter registrations to get around federal laws that prohibit states from conducting mass voter removals, wrote election lawyer Marc Elias for Democracy Docket.

"Conservative activists are using new emerging technologies to develop powerful tools for voter suppression and election subversion," Elias wrote. "Left unchecked, we risk a new level of election vigilantism taking hold. Election officials will be deluged by voter challenges as voters navigate a maze of disinformation about how to ensure they can vote and have their vote counted."

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The new company Eagle AI, which is enthusiastically endorsed by election denier Cleta Mitchell, claims its product can use public data sets to identify voter registrations that appear to be fraudulent, which would make mass challenges much easier and defeating them much more difficult and time-consuming.

Other projects, such as the Voter Reference Foundation (VoteRef), have been collecting public state voter information and other data that could be easily used to harass and intimidate voters or file mass challenges, and there's still a risk of armed vigilantes showing up at polls to menace voters.

"The rise of election vigilantism is not new," Elias wrote. "Last year, armed vigilantes with video cameras staked out drop boxes in Arizona. There were voter challenges in Georgia and elsewhere. Last month, the New York State Board of Elections issued a warning that individuals were impersonating county board of elections staff “in an effort to intimidate voters based on inaccurate and misleading information.”

"What will be different next year is the presidential election and the resources it will bring," he added. "Conservative donors and activists are building the tools, organizations and plans to disrupt the right to vote with the same fervor that Trump and his allies tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6."