Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) is a state-run voter monitoring system in which states periodically submit their voter rolls for review to identify incorrect and outdated voter information. Its membership consists of state-level election officials from 31 states and Washington, D.C. [1]
ERIC was established by Pew Charitable Trusts, a left-of-center nonprofit advocacy and grantmaking organization, in 2012.
Activity
Electronic Registration Information Center audits state voter rolls for errors in voter registrations. At least every 60 days, all ERIC member states submit their voter rolls for auditing. [2] From its founding in 2012 to 2017, ERIC found 26.5 million improper registrations, including incidents of wrong addresses, voters moving out of state, duplicates, and deceased registered voters. In 2017 alone, ERIC found 8.4 million discrepancies. [3]
Membership
New Electronic Registration Information Center member states pay a one-time initiation fee of $25,000. Annual fees vary by the size of the state, which as of 2017, range from $15,000-$64,000. [4] ERIC claims that state members save money by joining ERIC despite the fees by outsourcing their voter roll monitoring systems. [5]
ERIC is run by a board of directors, with each member state holding a single seat. [6]
Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck
Electronic Registration Information Center is often seen as the successor to the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck (IVRC), a program established in 2005 by former Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh in conjunction with the states of Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri. IVRC used a similar system as ERIC to audit voter rolls by comparing voter records between states. [7]
IVRC faced numerous controversies concerning inaccuracies, security breaches, and alleged racial biases. One study alleged that the IVRC recommended removing 200 legitimate voters for every one illegitimate voter. [8] In 2019, IVRC was indefinitely suspended due to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union after IVRC mistakenly exposed the private information of 1,000 Kansas voters. [9]
Many of IVRC’s former members are currently members of ERIC. [10]
Leadership
The development of Electronic Registration Information Center at Pew Charitable Trusts was led by David Becker, the former director of the left-of-center People for the American Way. [11]
In 2016, Becker co-founded and became the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump criticized the security of American elections by citing a research report written by Becker while at Pew which claimed that there were millions of inaccuracies in voter records. Becker claimed that Trump took his report out of context and that most inaccuracies were not exploitable for voter fraud. Though Becker was annoyed at his misrepresentation, he attributed the controversy to launching the newly founded CEIR to immediate success. On September 1, 2020, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $50 million to CEIR through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as part of their efforts to influence the administration of the 2020 elections. [12]
Controversy
Alleged Racial Bias
Voting expert Marc Meredith has said that the Electronic Registration Information Center does a “pretty good job” at monitoring voter rolls but is skeptical that the organization has no oversight to evaluate its performance. Meredith ran a program to simulate ERIC’s methods and found that the group tend to make more mistakes concerning non-white voters than white voters. [13]
Florida
Former Florida Governor Rick Scott (R-FL) refused to join ERIC despite support in the media and from some election officials. Governor Scott refused on the grounds that he didn’t want to give private voter information to “a liberal think tank,” referring to Pew Charitable Trusts, which established ERIC. [14]
In December 2019, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced that Florida would join ERIC to increase voter security and voter roll accuracy. In September 2020, WPTV reported that despite Governor DeSantis’s public statements, Florida had not yet joined ERIC, allegedly due to a lack of funding and for security reasons and thus would not have its voter rolls monitored for the 2020 election. [15] Florida joined ERIC the following year. [16]