The creators of a controversial program designed to hunt down voter fraud, promoted by conservative activists, are offering two new programs to state election officials ahead of the midterms.
Dr. John W. “Rick” Richards Jr. and his son John W. The first election software from Richards III, called EagleAI, promises to help officials and activists root out inaccurate voter registrations ahead of the 2024 election. Members of the Election Integrity Network, a group founded by Cleta Mitchell, a former election lawyer for President Donald Trump, embraced the program. But it was criticized as inaccurate by election officials and experts and some activists who tried it.
Now, the father-son duo is back with two new shows: ELLY and Psephos. He has pitched election officials in Missouri, North Carolina and Rhode Island, according to email correspondence and pitch materials obtained through Freedom of Information requests made by the nonpartisan government watchdog American Oversight and shared with NBC News.
Richards Jr., a medical doctor, presented ELLY last month at the “Election Integrity Summit” in Washington, DC, according to an attendee who spoke publicly about the closed-to-media event.
And on Wednesday, Richards III said both programs would be presented to the Georgia State Board of Elections, where Trump allies hold a majority. Richards III and his father declined to speak further to NBC News before the meeting.
According to campaign materials shared with election officials, the ELLY and Psephos programs are similar to EagleAI (pronounced “eagle eye”). All three programs help users cross-reference data with voter registrations by combining public records such as obituaries, US Postal Service data, property tax information or maps from Google.
ELLY is being marketed to county officials and led by Richards Jr., while Psephos is geared toward state-level officials and led by Richards III, according to promotional materials in emails with state government officials.
In the wake of Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, a cottage industry of activist groups and events has sprung up, organizing physical or digital canvasses to try to verify election results and voter rolls.
America’s voter rolls are mostly built for registration, not removal, and election officials struggle to keep them up-to-date. But mass challenges often create large workloads with little reward, as many challenged voters remain on the rolls and are not considered ineligible. Moreover, there is no evidence that voter fraud is widespread.
“Electoral integrity requires reliable tools to protect sensitive voter information, but platforms like ELLY and Psephos fall short, with outdated data lags, high false positive rates from possible compromise, privacy and legal compliance risks, and threats to invalid accuracy claims,” said the Chikwoma Executive Directors. statement
ELLY, a county-centric program, relies entirely on public records, but Psephos plans to integrate more government and commercial data with public records, according to materials Richards III shared with election officials. They may face the same problems as EagleAI. Publicly available data is less reliable than personal, protected information used by government entities to maintain voter rolls such as Social Security and driver’s license numbers.
“Names and birthday(s) or birth date(s) also lead to a large number of false positives, more false positives than true positives. So to get quality data, you have to have sensitive information,” said David Becker, who helped build the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) for a group of states.
ERIC is an interstate partnership that uses cutting-edge technology to share encoded data to help states update their voter rolls when people move or die in other states. Becker, who now runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan, nonprofit that seeks to increase trust in elections, said ERIC did not use public data because it was clear that the false positive rate would be too high.
ERIC was a little-known tool to help states make their voter rolls more accurate, before Mitchell and conservative activists began lobbying against it, a conservative website falsely claiming the system was helping Democrats and increasing voter rolls. Several states later left the partnership.
A campaign document for ELLY said volunteers would be available to help officials manage the program. The document does not indicate who those volunteers are. In 2023, Richards Jr. spent months training activists from Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network.
“ELLY may make approved data available to a curated group of volunteers trained to review voter registrations within the context of federal and state laws,” the document read. “This volunteer-supported service is provided as a courtesy, at no cost to counties, making it a cost-effective supplement to existing processes in resource-strapped offices.”
Before Wednesday’s public meeting of the Georgia State Board of Elections, Richards Jr. and his son privately pitched officials in other states on the programs.
According to emails and Zoom documents obtained by American Oversight, the two met last year with Matthew Alsager, chief of staff to Missouri Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskin.
“Our chief asked for a presentation, nothing substantial and no further action,” Rachel Dunn, Hoskins’ director of communications, said in an email.
NC Newsline first reported that Richards III discussed Syphos with Cathy Placencia, Rhode Island’s state director of elections, while Richards Jr. hired staff at ELLY at the North Carolina State Board of Elections, according to an email he wrote.
Election officials pitched in Rhode Island and North Carolina did not respond to requests for comment.
In February, Richards Jr. briefed election workers on ELLY at a Washington, DC summit called by former Trump national security adviser and leading advocate of election conspiracy theories Michael Flynn.
“We just had a briefing on an extraordinary data system,” Flynn said in an interview with British far-right activist and convicted felon Tommy Robinson hosted by the Trump administration at the State Department next week. “Where, it is called.”
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, who was a major funder of the 2020 election nullification effort, spoke about ELLY in an interview on LindellTV hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell after the summit. He called it “an alternative to ERIC,” saying, “It’s available to activists in their own states, and your own states can use it.”
A photo posted online and first reported by ProPublica showed Richards Jr. dining with Mitchell and two Department of Homeland Security officials — Heather Honey, a political recruiter focused on election integrity, and Marcy McCarthy, director of public affairs for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
It is unclear what was discussed, but it is clear that group work brought them together.
“Grateful for a friendship that stands shoulder-to-shoulder, united by purpose and conviction. The mission goes on … and the fellowship does,” McCarthy captioned the photo, which was taken offline but shared with NBC News by the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center.
Chris Jurski, a Florida activist who promoted election conspiracy theories and produced his own voter registration verification program called “The People’s Audit.”
Jurski said in social media posts that he helped build ELLY and promoted it to activist groups and on social media. Last week, he posted a screen recording on Telegram of ELLY, a user clicking through various state voter lists.
The video indicates that the program has incomplete data: 94% of New Jersey voter registrations and 100% of Washington, DC, registrations are flagged as “incomplete data or error.”
“The most comprehensive voter list analysis tool in the country doesn’t build itself,” Jurski wrote below the video.
As for EagleAI, it’s unclear if the program is still being used. The only county or state that has signed on to use it, Columbia County, Georgia, ended its agreement last March.
Nancy Gay, executive director of the county’s Board of Elections, said in an interview that her office had never used the program after struggling to log in.
“We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary, and we haven’t had time to train on it or use it,” Gay said.
He said the deal was “mutually” terminated and Richards Jr. has not been in touch since.
