For years, ERIC, or the Electronic Registration Information Center, worked in relative obscurity. Member states, which at ERICās peak last year reached 34, including key presidential battlegrounds, shared information about their voter rolls in a central exchange. The program revealed voters who were registered in two states, unregistered citizens who were nonetheless eligible to vote, and, occasionally, evidence of illegal double voting.
The system appealed to both Republicans and Democrats, offering data to help keep voter rolls up-to-date and also ease the process of registering eligible voters. Then, the far-right attacks came.
In January last year, Gateway Pundit, a site thatās pushed anti-vaccine and election lies in the past, falsely accused ERIC of being a George Soros-funded effort to help Democrats.
Within days, Louisianaās secretary of state announced he would withdraw his state from ERIC, citing āmedia reports about potential questionable funding sourcesā among other reasons, and becoming the first ex-member in ERICās decade-long history. Then, this January, Alabama followed suit. In March, Donald Trump called ERIC a āterrible Voter Registration System that āpumps the rollsā for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up.ā That same day, Missouri, Florida and West Virginia announced their departures. By July, Texas joined what had become an exodus, following Ohio, Iowa and Virginia in announcing its departure. (Texasā resignation goes into effect next month.)
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, the former ERIC members are now struggling to replace the organization.
On Thursday, Ohio announced individual data-sharing agreements with Florida, Virginia and West Virginia, and West Virginia announced similar deals Friday with the same states. But several of those agreements, reviewed by HuffPost, fell well short of ERICās capabilities.
Some secretaries have acknowledged the difficulty of trying to replace a multi-state organization on their own.
āThere are still some limitations because weāre not getting other statesā data,ā Jay Ashcroft Ā®, Missouriās secretary of state who pulled his state from ERIC in March, told HuffPost in an interview, referring to the fact that non-ERIC-members canāt automatically check their voter rolls against ERICās remaining 25 member states.
If thereās one thing republicans hate, itās a fair election.
This sounds like itās in that same line of news as the republic election officials banning the use of private money to help maintain and protect aging election systems. There was an article the other day about Zuckerbergās non-profit donating a bunch of money in 2020 to help support and fund local election offices.