Digital Identities and Phantom Voters

In 2016, the Idaho legislature passed a bill that allowed people who hold a valid Idaho driver's license to register to vote online. Registrants could enter their driver’s license information into the Secretary of State's website, and as long as it matched the ITD DL data, their registration would be approved electronically without ever having to appear in person before an elections official.

So what’s the problem? Isn’t possession of a physical Idaho Driver’s License proof of both identity and residence? What’s wrong with using a digital version?

The problem has to do with the nature of digital verification. Like ALL electronic information, digital identification is subject to corruption, abuse, and compromise, and whoever controls the software that verifies your digital IDs, controls you.

Using digital identification to eliminate the human component in voter registration opens the door to fraud and is a dangerous path to go down.

This is the second in a series of articles exposing problems with Electronic Voter Registration. Other articles include E-Registration Opens Door to Fraud , Phantom Election Management , and Data Collection Disguised.

Secure Voter Rolls and Digital ID

No Humans Needed

The promoters of electronic registration seek to make registering to vote as easy as possible. No need for a registration form, a written signature, or an appearance before an election official. They conceived of a process whereby a voter’s driver’s license number could be typed into the Idaho SOS website and processed by software that would query ITD’s driver’s license data base. In case of a match, a voter registration record would be created, using an electronic version of the ITD signature. What could be simpler?

So easy, a BOT could do it.

But therein lies the problem. The SOS e-registration software is smart enough to verify data against an ITD database, but it is not smart enough to prevent a BOT from using illicitly obtained DL data to create fraudulent registrations. And in this video Dr. Doug Frank proves that this is happening in all states, including Idaho.

Clearly it is illegal for a BOT to create a voter registration record. But if a BOT uses valid DL data to create a registration record, how can we distinguish real, human created “electronic registrations” from fraudulent ones, created by BOTs?

The answer is, we cannot. Once a BOT-created registration is “verified”, it is indistinguishable from a human-created record. And the problem is worse still. Even if it was possible to screen out BOTS by making certain the registrant was human—which is nearly impossible in the age of A.I. —it would not be enough. The e-Registration program must also verify that the person attempting to register to vote is the legitimate holder of the driver’s license that is being used to register. And there is no way a computer can do that without retinal scans or blood samples.

In other words, we are back at the crossroad where we started. On the one hand, we can present a physical copy of an official picture-ID in-person to an authorized election official. On the other we can submit to digital, biometric identification and technical tyranny.

Do we want real human elections or computerized "virtual" elections? That is the question.

“Skip the Trip” Enables Fraud

The problems with digital identification get more complicated when you consider that ITD’s new “Skip the Trip” online DMV service is just as vulnerable to malicious interference as the Secretary of State's e-registration program.

The process of obtaining an Idaho Driver’s license is rigorous and secure. One must appear in person with numerous forms of ID proving identity and residence. But once a license has been obtained, anyone with a DL number and corresponding SSN can modify the mailing address and/or residential address in the ITD database with no additional verification. And they can order a “replacement” ID at any time.

Neither the SOS e-registration or Idaho’s DMV online services software uses multi-factor authentication, which is required by Title 67-831 to access state data. And allowing online modification of driver’s license data without rigorous safeguards is a serious failure.

ITD’s easily-changeable residence data undermines the whole premise on which online voter registration was based. How could those who drafted Idaho’s code allowing for e-registrations have overlooked these problems?

As it turns out, the legislators who authorized e-registration in 2016 did NOT overlook the problem. The DMV’s “Skip the Trip” online portal did not exist at the time electronic voter registration was authorized. It was not made available until 2019, immediately before the COVID lockdown. How convenient!

The ease of accessing DMV information online opens the system up to fraud and malicious mischief. And as far as voter registration goes, it undermines the credibility of ITD’s driver's license data as regards residence. This is a serious problem and over time, making government issued drivers licenses "convenient" for fraudsters to obtain will create a crisis of credibility.

But as everyone knows, full service “digital ID” is waiting in the wings. And there is no better way to force “biometric identification” on an unwilling population than to destroy the efficacy of government issued photo-identification.

Phantom Registrations are Undetectable

The article Ban E-Registration, shows how researchers have proven that bad actors appear to be manipulating address data of hundreds of Florida residents. But a large percentage of the “bump” in voter registrations in recent years is almost certainly "phantoms" based on the identity of real residents.

So why are phantom voters a problem? First of all, it is certain that fraudulent registrations can be transformed into fraudulent votes. The most obvious way “phantom” registrations can be used to cast illicit ballots is by absentee voting, but there are other ways as well.

And another problem is that "phantom" registrations that are based on real Idaho resident ID are nearly impossible to identify. Many people assume that fraudulent registrations can be detected, but that is rarely the case. So it is misleading to promise Idaho residents that with enough resources, and access to government records, computer programs can "clean up" voter rolls. If a computer cannot determine the authenticity of the entity creating a registration record, it will not be able to detect "phantom" voters after the fact.

Nevertheless, the Idaho secretary of state has proposed a 10 million dollar “upgrade” of Idaho’s voter electronic registration system, and the details of the system were revealed when HB 339 was passed by the legislature in April of 2025. Unfortunately, HB 339 was sold to legislators as the SOS’s solution to the problem of corrupt voter roles. But it cannot possibly verify voter rolls, and we have outlined serious problems with the bill in the article Data Collection Disguised as Voter Integrity.

In short, HB 339 takes the wrong path to cleaning up Idaho voter rolls: it expands the power of the SOS to collect data; it outsources cleaning voter rolls to NGO's and private software companies; it puts Idaho one step closer to Digital ID, and it fails to close critical loopholes.

The cyber criminals who are adding fraudulent registrations to Idaho voter rolls are sophisticated, and they have access to illicit personal information of thousands of residents. This information includes names, current and past addresses, DL numbers, Social Security numbers, political affiliations, voting records and probably much more.

And when they create registrations that they intend to use to cast fraudulent ballots, they do need them to be identifiable, so the first "phantoms" they add to the voter rolls are real residents who are infrequent voters. If there are insufficient non-voters in a particular area, the DMV DL address of other Idaho residents could be modified, or the name slightly changed.

• Voters should be encouraged to register in-person, at the elections office, before the election. This used to be the norm.

• No one should be allowed to request an absentee ballot until they have voted in person at least once. Exceptions can be made for military, and unusual circumstances.

• Mail-in Registration should be possible ONLY for persons whose mailing address is the same as their physical address. Photocopies of documents proving residence and identity should be included with the registration, and a phone contact should be mandatory.

• Idaho’s DMV should disallow online address changes. It can use either written, signed, official change-of-address forms, or secure, verifiable, US Post Office Change of Address online data to update driver's license residence information. Again, this is the way things have normally been done in the past.

• Any person attempting to renew or replace their Official Idaho Driver's License should make an appointment to appear in person at the DMV, or make a written request for a replacement license by way of a public notary.

Idaho needs to make it difficult, rather than absurdly easy, for fraudsters to steal the identities of its residents.

Humans Back in the Driver's Seat

The only way to prevent the creation of phantom registrations that can be manipulated by bad actors is to stop the problem at the source, by eliminating Electronic Registration, and making mail-in registration more secure. E-Registration is especially unnecessary, since Idaho allows for Election Day registration, and it is inherently open to fraud.

There are two directions that Idaho can go. One is to continue down the path of technological tyranny: digital identification, electronic registration, electronic voting, electronic money, 5G, the Internet of things, and virtual reality, as humans cede more and more of their humanity to their digital overlords.

The other is to reject the road to digital dystopia, and return to simple, easy-to-understand, human-run voting systems: in-person registration, in-person voting, hand-written poll books, in-person photocopying of all ballots, and at least partial hand counting.

The following are a few suggestions for how to make both voter registration and physical driver's licenses more human and more secure.