A lawsuit against Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon has been filed in a federal court by the MN Association of Government Accountability, several of its adult members, two minors under the age of 18, and MN State Senators Mark Koran and Calvin Bahr.
The claim, filed by Attorney Erik Kaardal, alleges that the Secretary’s unauthorized disclosures of the plaintiffs’ private information, specifically, their private driver data to third-party organizations, violates their rights under the 1994 DPA (Drivers Privacy Protection Act), 18 U.S.C. § 2721.
The DPPA was passed to better protect individuals’ personal information held by state motor vehicle authorities. The law restricts the disclosure and use of highly sensitive personal information in state motor vehicle agency databases, including Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety (DPS). Disclosure of private DPS data without a permissible purpose violates federal law.
According to the lawsuit, the Department of State violated the DPPA and has entered into an agreement with the private corporation ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center), which obligates the state to share DPPA-protected data without a permissible purpose.
In 2014, the Minnesota legislature authorized the Secretary to enter into an agreement to share data from the statewide voter registration and data from the motor vehicle agency “in order to maintain voter registration records.” However, the private data disclosed far exceeds even what was authorized by the legislature.
Among others, the DPS data fields the Secretary’s ERIC agreement promises to disclose to ERIC include
- Name
- Date of birth
- Address
- Driver’s license or state identification card number
- The last four digits of the Social Security number
- Phone number
- Email address for all registered voters and all other individuals in the DPS database.
Minn. Stat. § 201.13 allows the Secretary to enter into an agreement “in order to maintain voter registration records,” but the Minnesota legislature authorized no disclosure of private DPS data of unregistered voters to third parties, and voter registration drives are not a recognized exception in the DPPA.
Disclosure of private DPS data without a permissible purpose violates the federal DPPA law, which preempts and supersedes any state law authorizing such data sharing agreements.
No lawful reason exists to disclose this personal information to third parties.
Plaintiffs are concerned that even private data of children—those under the age of 18 who are ineligible to vote—is also being shared.
ERIC is a private nonprofit organization with a purported purpose of assisting states to improve the accuracy of voter rolls and increase access to voter registration. However, records show ERIC’s primary focus is to conduct voter registration drives.
What is ERIC?
Katy Christian Magazine explains – With the losses of both houses of Congress by Obama in 2010, the Left had to regroup, and ERIC was born. Essentially, ERIC is a huge artificial intelligence database which contains all the personal information of every citizen who has ever lived in an ERIC state. Data comes from every person who has applied for a driving license, visited a state welfare or health agency, or worked for state elections in any capacity.
That information becomes the possession of ERIC and is never made public or returned to the states. In “exchange”, ERIC gives its members four lists: who moved within the ERIC state, who moved to another ERIC state, who died, and who had been adjudicated unable to vote for reasons of felony conviction or mental incapacity. Its mandates to members, from the bylaws, were 100% about registering unregistered voters rather than cleaning rolls, despite what they say today.
Kris Jurski, the lead systems analyst from the Florida Republican Assembly has proven that ERIC’s out-of-state movers’ list actually multiplies the phantom addresses (those which are deemed “undeliverable” by the USPS) on the voter rolls by a power of 3, instead of their being removed from the voter rolls of the state from which they moved. It is these “bad addresses” which are the phantoms whose votes are added to drop boxes, or turned in to County Election Supervisors’ offices.
David Becker, the far-left founder of ERIC, recently resigned from the board after his leadership in the so-called non-partisan organization was questioned.
In 2018, while speaking in Austin, TX, Becker described ERIC as the “single most effective voter registration drive in history.”
So, who is David Becker? And why should Americans trust a third-party organization to “maintain” our voter rolls?
David Becker is a left-leaning election law advocate and the co-founder and executive director of the Center for Election and Innovation Research (CEIR), the group Mark Zuckerberg funded in 2020 that made it easier to steal our elections in primarily urban areas across America.
In 2005, when Becker was still a trial lawyer in the Civil Rights Division, a formal complaint was made against Becker after he contacted the city of Boston offering to help defeat a lawsuit opened against them by his employer, the DOJ, for voting infractions. Brad Scholzman, acting head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division at the time, stated, “It was the most unethical thing I’ve ever seen” and called Becker “a hard-core leftist” who “Couldn’t stand conservatives.”
Hans von Spakovsky, who worked as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, agreed with Scholzman’s characterization of Becker. “In his role with the DOJ, he was supposed to be non-partisan, but his emails uncovered in the Boston investigation revealed nasty, disparaging remarks about Republicans. Very unethical and unprofessional.”
Watch David Becker explain how ERIC helps to identify people who are eligible but not yet registered to vote and how ERIC will be an effective tool for in adding them to the voter rolls.
“Secretary of State Steve Simon’s arrangement with ERIC is breaking the law. It exposes private and personally identifying information of Minnesotans to ERIC and their undisclosed contractors, subcontractors and agents. With recent Minnesota law changes that allow 16-year-olds to register to vote, we should be extra zealous in protecting the privacy of our children. Federal law specifically protects sensitive information we provide to the government when we obtain a driver’s license or state photo ID. It’s our duty to follow the law to protect our citizens. We hope the courts will act quickly and issue a temporary injunction to prevent further unlawful disclosure,” Senator Mark Koran said yesterday after the lawsuit was filed.
ERIC, and its contractors, subcontractors, and agents, claim that the DPS data they receive is authorized under the “public function” exception to the DPPA. That exception states, “For use by…any private person or entity acting on behalf of a Federal, State or local agency in carrying out its function.” However, the ERIC member agreement specifically states that ERIC is not an agent (“agent” is a legal term for one “acting on behalf of” another) for any member. Federal election law preempts state officials from conducting voter registration drives, and the federal Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) has stated state election officials cannot use federal funds for voter registration drives.
The DPPA requires states to protect all motor vehicle data from disclosure, regardless of whether the individual is registered to vote or not registered to vote. The data is private.
Attorney Erick Kaardal said, “The Secretary of State’s office is in a legally untenable position. It is violating the DPPA and its purported government function is preempted by federal law.”
