Conservative activists who describe themselves as “voter fraud hunters” have quietly rolled out two new computer tools, Elly and Psephos, that they say can help states and counties spot questionable voter registrations. The programs were built by retired Georgia physician John W. Richards Jr. and his son, John W. Richards III, who were previously linked to the controversial EagleAI project. Developers and allied activists have shown off demos to election officials in several states and say they plan to bring the tools to Georgia’s State Election Board.
In promotional decks and emails, Elly is pitched as a county-level “Elector List” tool and Psephos as a state-level system that cross-references public records such as obituaries, USPS change-of-address data, property-tax rolls and Google Maps imagery with voter rolls to flag apparent errors and duplicates, according to NBC News. Supporters stress that the systems lean on public records rather than the encoded personal identifiers used by interstate partnerships like ERIC, and they present that as a cheaper alternative. Backers say the goal is to speed voter list maintenance and give counties and citizen auditors new ways to look for potential problems.
How the tools work
Demonstrations walk users through automated matching routines that generate county-by-county lists for local review, but the basic approach closely resembles earlier efforts that stitched together scattered public data sources. Investigative reporting has detailed how EagleAI and similar projects pulled in obituaries, change-of-address files and scraped web data, a mix critics say is incomplete and prone to error, as reported by Documented. A Georgia voter-advocacy summary also notes that Elly claims to tap more than 200 million records from dozens of states, according to a VoterGA report.
Experts warn of false positives and privacy risks
Voting-rights advocates and election-security specialists say systems that rely only on public records tend to generate lots of false positives and relatively few solid leads, while also tempting volunteers to dig for sensitive personal details to “prove” someone is ineligible. Legal and privacy concerns have been raised by watchdog groups and policy advisers who warn that counties could be swamped with inaccurate challenges and exposed to new liability if third-party lists are treated as authoritative, as outlined by American Oversight.
Where the pitches have landed
Emails and pitch documents show outreach or demonstrations in Missouri, North Carolina and Rhode Island, with staff at North Carolina’s state elections office agreeing to “witness” a demo, according to local reporting from NC Newsline. Attendees at election-integrity gatherings in Washington, D.C., have also described walk-throughs of the county-focused software.
What officials say and what's next
Richards III has said he and his father plan to present both programs to the Georgia State Election Board, and NBC News reviewed a screen recording posted to Telegram that shows Elly clicking through voter rolls and flagging extremely high shares of recent registrations as incomplete or in error. Election officials who previously evaluated EagleAI described it as inaccurate, and Columbia County, Georgia, ended its EagleAI contract in 2025, a cautionary episode detailed by Documented.
What this means for voters
For now, local election offices remain the gatekeepers. Any lists produced by outside tools still have to be vetted before they are used to contact or challenge voters, and administrators warn that noisy, mass-generated leads could translate into hours of extra work for already stretched county staff. Voter advocates and watchdogs argue that states should demand transparent data practices, independent validation and clear legal guardrails before relying on outsider-built systems to influence voter list maintenance, a point underscored in American Oversight's coverage of ERIC alternatives.
