Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is refusing to say whether he’ll veto a Democrat bill granting Virginia’s voter roll data to a leftist-linked elections group that is instrumental to Democrats’ get-out-the-vote machine.
On Friday, the state’s Democrat-controlled Senate sent legislation (SB 606) to Youngkin’s desk that would force Virginia to rejoin the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a widely used voter-roll “management” system founded by far-left activist David Becker 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
