Last month, The Gateway Pundit reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had sent a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche urging him to renew calls for investigations into barcode/QR code voting systems and the Election Registration Information Center (ERIC) and its handling of sensitive motor-vehicle data.
DHS officials had previously met with the DOJ under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in September 2025 regarding these concerns. DHS’s previous concerns did not seem to produce any sort of resolution, legal determination, or any meaningful action.
Now, under recently confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice has sent two letters requesting information related to the DHS concerns— one to ERIC and one to the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR).
The DHS letter outlines concerns that ERIC may have violated the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) by providing drivers’ private data to the CEIR. CEIR and ERIC both claim that this is a “permissible use” outlined in the DPPA and that the data was used for research.
The DOJ letter to ERIC states:
ERIC has maintained that its use of DPPA-protected personal information falls under a statutory permissible use. But courts have construed exceptions to the DPPA’s protections narrowly, and the membership agreement’s vague references to “research projects” and “responding to requests for information from third parties” do not appear to be tethered to the DPPA’s limited permissible uses. Even apart from the issue of disclosure to third parties, the scope of ERIC’s own use of DPPA-protected personal information remains unclear. Although using such information for furtherance of government functions may be a permitted use, using protected information for certain partisan purposes is not a government function and is thus not permitted under the DPPA — regardless of whether a state consents.
