The Columbia County Board of Elections voted to move forward with using Eagle AI during the meeting on Friday, Dec. 1.
Nancy Gay, elections supervisor, said the elections office would be a beta tester for EagleAI, and the program would be used as a research tool in verifying if residents are still living in the county.
“What I would like to do is use the program to compare out voter data and see the flags that it pops, if those voters really did move out of state or died or incarcerated or whatever,” Gay said. “It does nothing to the voter registration system itself.”
Read more: Citizens attend presentation on EagleAI program that involves cleaning up voter rolls
The elections office would still send out confirmation notices to voters to verify if the residents have moved. Gay said they would still send out a letter to the voter asking them to respond and confirm if they have moved.
“If they send the form back, that’s the only way that we would remove them,” Gay said. “If they don’t, we don’t do anything to the record. That’s how we would intend to do anything with EagleAI.”
With 2024 being a major election year, Gay said she didn’t know how much the program would be used, but if it works like Dr. Rick Richards, the creator, claims, it would be beneficial if the elections office received a large number of challenges.
“We have had voter challenges dropped on us from one name to 6,000 names,” said Elections Board Member Larry Wiggins. “And the second largest I think was 900 names.”
Using EagleAI would not change the voter rolls or disenfranchise voters, Wiggins said. He added that the steps the elections office takes to verify a voter would not change.
“If you can look at a timeline of the way we handle confirming whether voters are still eligible, nothing will change in the steps that we take,” Wiggins said. “The only thing, in the little segment that is research to reach the point where you decide what you need to do, EagleAI would be inserted there as a tool to help with the research. The step we take after the research would be the same as we take now.”
Gay said if the program works like Dr. Richards claims, it would be very beneficial, but she doesn’t know because it is a new program, and she would like the opportunity to see if does work like it should.
“EagleAI will have no access to our records,” Wiggins said. “They will be working off the state of Georgia’s Secretary of State list, and that list does not contain critical identifying information such as the exact birthdate or social security number or drivers license number.”
Dr. Richards said the date for EagleAI comes from multiple sources that are the same ones used by the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which many states currently use. These sources include the Secretary of State’s office, Google business, the National Change of Address Program through the U.S. Post Office, funeral homes, county coroners, the Social Security Death Index and more.
“All of our data is the same as ERIC, except for two that we’re going above and beyond to get more data than ERIC does, so that should provide increased accuracy. The one thing we don’t get is the driver’s license, two things, driver’s license, social security and full birthdate,” Richards said.
Gay said the elections office received a letter from one Columbia County voter asking that the county not use EagleAI, but nothing else.
“Whatever decision we make we’re never going to please everybody, but every decision we make is going to be in the best interest of running this office fairly and efficiently and taking care of the voters of Columbia County only,” Wiggins said.
Board members voted to enter into an agreement with EagleAI.
Stephanie Hill is the managing editor and covers Columbia County government for The Augusta Press. Reach her at stephanie@theaugustapress.com.
