Multiple States Pulling Out Of Key Voter Registration Partnership
Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia are voluntarily removing themselves from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a database used to keep accurate records of voters across states.
On Monday, Republican-led states of Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia jointly announced that they would be withdrawing from the Electronic Registration Information Center commonly known as ERIC. This is a key turn of events that experts say will hamper those states’ ability to keep the most up-to-date voter registration records during future elections. This comes after weeks of tense negotiations between fellow lawmakers and the representatives of ERIC in which they were trying to hammer out potential changes the system could make to appease the GOP members who were mulling their withdrawal.
First, we need to understand a little bit more about what ERIC actually does to help with organizing the state’s voter registration roll. It is a partnership between states to share government data from election offices, Departments of Motor Vehicle, and the Social Security Administration. When compiled, it allows the system to identify voters who have passed away, people who have active registrations in multiple states who can illegally vote twice in a single federal election, and people that have moved from one state to another.
Up until now, this system was a truly bipartisan effort being praised by both sides of the aisle. ERIC’s true origin began about ten years ago or so when seven states decided to work together to produce more accurate voter registration rolls. Four of those seven original states were Republican-run, and its membership has slowly grown to include more than 30 states up until recently. The states that were participating spanned the political spectrum from the more liberal mined Rhode Island and Washington D.C. to the more conservative South Carolina and Texas.
The reason that Republican states are now pulling out of the program started with a misinformation campaign that was launched from the far right of the Republican party through a publication named The Gateway Pundit. According to NPR, “The Gateway Pundit, a far-right publication, published in January 2022 the first of a series of articles painting ERIC as part of a liberal conspiracy to steal elections.” They finger two main villains at the heart of this conspiracy and that is George Soros and David Becker.
David Becker was one of the men that helped found the ERIC program, which he said came about because when he asked lawmakers, “What would you fix in elections that would make your job better?” The most common response was “voter registration.” According to an NPR article, “NPR spoke with numerous current and former Republican elected officials who say they have worked with Becker over the years and found him to be even-handed in his elections work.”
Nonetheless, the republican states that pulled out on Monday stated that their constituents have voiced their concerns about the program and that the states do not wish to participate at this time. They joined Louisiana and Alabama as other states that have recently departed the program. Louisiana cited their withdrawal was due to concerns raised by citizens, government watchdog organizations, and media reports.
Election officials from across the political spectrum consensus opinion about the withdrawal of the states is that it is impossible to duplicate what ERIC does for a participating state. The only outcome that is certain is that those states will simply not have as up-to-date voter registration records as the states that are participating.
