Zuckerberg's 2020 Election Activities Back in the Spotlight — the AG Has Been Notified

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is back in the headlines — and it's probably news that he would rather forget.

The new Attorney General Todd Blanche was recently notified by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about the past activities of election activist groups, including the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Election Innovation and Research, or CEIR.

New disclosures from the Department of Homeland Security are raising questions about whether states improperly shared sensitive motor-vehicle data with a private organization funded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan as part of a massive voter-outreach operation ahead of the 2020 election.

In a September 2 letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin asked the Justice Department to review potential violations of the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act involving the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, and the CEIR.

The issue had previously been referred to DOJ, but he is now asking the newly confirmed attorney general to take another look. 

At the center of the controversy is how ERIC uses information supplied by participating states. The organization receives voter-registration records along with motor-vehicle data and compares the databases to identify inaccurate registrations, deceased voters and people who appear eligible to vote but aren't registered. ERIC says its mission includes improving voter-roll accuracy and increasing registration among eligible citizens. 

But DHS says sensitive information didn't necessarily remain inside ERIC.

“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.