A seemingly inoffensive bipartisan outfit created to help states sort out their voter rolls has emerged as the latest partisan battlefield, with a half-dozen GOP-led states canceling their involvement with the organization this year, saying it’s turned into a proving ground for left-wing ideas.
Ohio and Iowa withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center last week, following on the heels of Florida, West Virginia and Missouri earlier this month. Alabama canceled its membership in January, and Louisiana withdrew last year.
Alaska’s election chief is also eyeing the exit, and legislators in Texas are pushing for an out, too.
“ERIC has chosen repeatedly to ignore demands to embrace reforms that would bolster confidence in its performance, encourage growth in its membership, and ensure not only its present stability but also its durability,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose wrote in his withdrawal letter, complaining of decisions he said have turned ERIC into an organization “that appears to favor only the interests of one political party.”
But some conservative experts cautioned against a total abandonment, saying whatever its flaws, ERIC serves a critical purpose.
“ERIC is a toolbox that states use to help clean voter rolls,” said J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. “The more states that leave ERIC, the less clean our voter rolls will be, until there’s an effective replacement that has been accepted by other states.”
The center is the latest victim of the deep rift that emerged over how the U.S. conducts its elections, with competing views over what’s more important. Democrats generally argue the paramount goal is to have as many people as possible voting. Republicans say it’s most important to ensure votes aren’t cast fraudulently.
ERIC, founded in 2012, tried to bridge the gap, helping states clean their voter rolls and also encourage more voting.
Using the data member states send in, it produces reports of people who appear to be registered more than once, and names of people the federal government believes to be deceased but who are still on the rolls.
It also sends reports to the states identifying likely citizens who aren’t registered. As part of ERIC’s agreement, states must send a notice inviting them to register.
ERIC says it flagged 4.4 million unregistered potential voters for states in 2022 alone.
And through the first two months of 2023, it says it has sniffed out nearly 400,000 people who may have moved from one state to another, more than 500,000 people who moved inside a state, and more than 23,000 in-state duplicate entries. It also caught roughly 9,100 names of people whom it said were dead.
States may also request reports on how many deceased persons cast ballots, and how many people on their rolls appear to have voted more than once within the state or voted in more than one state.
ERIC didn’t respond to an inquiry on how many states request those reports, but Mr. Adams said many of them do.
He should know. He’s suing some of the states to get those reports, arguing they are public information under federal law. ERIC’s contract with states prohibits releasing those reports. Mr. Adams says ERIC should drop that secrecy provision.
But he said overall, ERIC serves an important purpose.
“It’s the only functioning tool that states have to detect cross-state registration and voting, and that’s an incredibly valuable tool,” he said. “People who say oh, we’ll replace it — OK, who?”
States that have withdrawn have cited a host of reasons.
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said that being required to send notices to unregistered but potentially eligible citizens amounts to harassment. He said that should be voluntary.
Meanwhile, he said, states should be required to use the double-state voting data that can detect instances of fraud.
Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd said he wanted to see better protections for the voter information ERIC has access to.
Mr. LaRose, in Ohio, had warned ERIC earlier this month that he would leave if he didn’t see improvements at a board meeting last week. The changes weren’t made, and he made good on his vow.
“I cannot justify the use of Ohio’s tax dollars for an organization that seems intent on rejecting meaningful accountability, publicly maligning my motives, and waging a relentless campaign of misinformation about this effort,” he said. “The conduct of ERIC and some of its hyper-partisan allies in recent weeks only heightens my suspicion and reinforces my decision.”
One recurring complaint of the withdrawing states was the role of David Becker, who helped found ERIC when he worked at the Pew Charitable Trusts and has served as a non-voting ex officio member of the board until he withdrew last week.
Mr. Becker says the objections to ERIC — and to his involvement — were excuses.
“All of the alleged complaints about ERIC were never brought up until propaganda sites started spreading lies about ERIC,” he said. “All of these deeply red and deeply blue states worked together without ever raising any of these concerns before.”
He said the states themselves are ERIC. They run the outfit and Ohio even served as the chair last year.
Mr. Becker said withdrawing states have seen first-hand the benefits of ERIC. He pointed to prosecutions of double-voting in Florida and Ohio which he said developed out of information gleaned from ERIC reports.
As for his involvement, Mr. Becker said some of the withdrawing states have approvingly cited him in their own press releases in recent years. And several of those states have worked with him and his new outfit, the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin has also weighed in this month, blasting “misinformation” about the organization.
He bristled at suggestions his operation got funding from George Soros, an activist billionaire who has used his wealth to push liberal causes. Some news outlets have argued that ERIC was established with help from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which in turn has received money through Mr. Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
Mr. Hamlin didn’t address those start-up allegations but said ERIC’s “day-to-day operations” right now are funded through annual dues paid by the states. Dues currently run between $26,000 and $116,000, depending on the state’s population.
Mr. Hamlin also rejected worries about ERIC’s handling of voter information.
He said the outfit doesn’t have direct access to states’ voting data, and only works off the files states send it. The data, he said, is stored at a secure location in the U.S.
ERIC had grown to more than 30 states, but the withdrawals leave it with 26 states and the District of Columbia. They still account for roughly half of the nation’s population.
Mr. Becker said for states still in the consortium, they’re going to catch fewer duplicate names because there are fewer states to compare to. But for states like Florida that withdrew, they’ll see nothing.
“Their elections are going to be less secure without ERIC. There’s no question about this,” he said.
But Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Ohio’s secretary of state, said they never used ERIC to maintain their voter lists anyway. Mr. Nichols said Ohio uses the Postal Service’s National Change of Address database and supplements with county boards of elections mining their records to find names that should be removed.
“Ohio has the cleanest, most accurate registration database of arguably any state in the nation, but we didn’t do it with ERIC data,” Mr. Nichols said.
Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, said states have legitimate concerns, which he is detailing in a forthcoming paper.
He said there is a need for some organization to do the work ERIC did to help states cleanse voter rolls, but he said reforms must be made.
“ERIC is doing a number of things wrong that need to be fixed,” he said. “Plan A is to keep trying to get those changes made. If that doesn’t happen then they should start forming a separate organization to do what ERIC is supposed to do.”
Mr. von Spakovsky, now manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, warned that would be a significant undertaking.
