Democrats and their media allies have long claimed the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, is a popular, nonpartisan venture designed to help clean state voter rolls. But if that’s true, why do primarily Democrat lawmakers feel the need to strong-arm their state election officials into join the program?
Founded in 2012 by far-left activist David Becker, ERIC is a widely used voter-roll “management” system that was “sold to states as a quick and easy way to update their voter rolls.” In reality, ERIC’s membership agreement places a higher priority on registering new voters than on cleaning up existing voter rolls.
The program inflates voter rolls by requiring member states to contact “eligible but unregistered” (EBU) residents to encourage them to register to vote. When a state joins ERIC, it is required to submit “all active and inactive voter files,” “all licensing or identification records contained in the motor vehicles database,” and any state files related to “voter registration functions.” Then, ERIC contrasts this data with that submitted by other member states.
After this process, ERIC compiles updated voter-roll information — including lists of voters who have multiple registrations, moved, or died, and lists of EBUs — and submits it to member states. As Victoria Marshall explained in these pages, ERIC only mandates that states engage in voter list maintenance “after a state has independently validated” the data it receives from the organization. In other words, “if a state does not independently validate the ERIC data, it is not required to clean its voter rolls.”
