Florida, Missouri, And West Virginia Withdraw From Leftist-Controlled Voter Roll ‘Maintenance’ Group ERIC

Missouri, Florida and West Virginia have announced that they are withdrawing from the Electronic Registration Information Center. This interstate alliance, controlled by Democrat operatives, encourages partisan outreach under the guise simple voter roll maintenance.

Similar to before reported The Federalist reports that ERIC, a voter-roll management organization, is used in nearly all 30 US states and District of Columbia. “clean” By removing duplicates or deceased registrants, state voter rolls can be updated. However, government watchdogs have noted that this is not the case. VerityVoteERIC is not designed to help the states get rid of their dirty rolls. It actually helps to inflate their rolls by requiring states send get-out-the vote (GOTV), mailers to non-registered residents (and most likely Democrat-leaning).

ERIC is also known for its political compromises. David Becker (far-left politician and activist) founded ERIC. He still controls the organization as an administrator. “nonvoting” it’s director. Becker was also the founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. It is one of the two organizations that raised $419million from Mark Zuckerberg for fund-raising. Democrat get-out-the-vote efforts in mostly blue counties of swing states during the 2020 election.

In light of these concerns, a working group of ERIC member states — including Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia — advocated for changes to be made to the alliance in 2022. This is a letter ERIC Executive director Shane Hamlin said that Missouri Secretary-of-State John Ashcroft stated that ERIC had failed to respond to Missouri’s concerns and is the main reason for the state’s withdrawal from the agreement.

Ashcroft wrote that these concerns include the refusal to “require member states to participate in addressing multi-state voter fraud”• Focusing on “adding names to voter rolls by requiring a solicitation to individuals who already had an opportunity to register to vote and made the conscious decision to not be registered”• Allowing “for a hyper-partisan individual to be an ex-officio non-voting member on its governance board”It is also unnecessarily restrictive “how Missouri utilizes data reports.”

“We have worked hard over the last several years to implement procedures that will make Missouri elections better, voter rolls more accurate, and bring greater trust to the election process,” Ashcroft stated in an press release Missouri’s withdrawal decision. “Voter confidence is compromised when individuals vote in more than one state and nothing is done. It appears that ERIC will not make the necessary changes to address these concerns, therefore, it is time to move on.”

Another concern the state leaders expressed was the requirement for states to share confidential voter data — usually DMV or social services data — with ERIC.

“As Secretary of State, I have an obligation to protect the personal information of Florida’s citizens, which the ERIC agreement requires us to share,” Cord Byrd, Florida Secretary Of State, said in press release. “Florida has tried to back reforms to increase protections, but these  protections were refused. Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC.”

Mac Warner (West Virginia Secretary of States) also denounced the ERIC partisanship.

“There is no defensible justification to allow any opportunity for partisanship in voter registration and list maintenance, much less in the administration of our nation’s elections,” Warner spoke in the Missouri Press Release.

Missouri, Florida and West Virginia weren’t the only ones to leave ERIC. The last year was Louisiana And Alabama Both have been suspended.

Victoria Marshall is a Staff Writer at The Federalist. Her work has appeared in Townhall, National Review and the New York Post. Hillsdale College, where she studied journalism and politics, graduated her senior year in 2021. Follow her Twitter at @vemrshll