Election deniers targeting program that helps prevent fraud: 'They want chaos'

Election deniers have taken aim at a multi-state tool used to ensure election security as Republican legislatures withdraw from a data-sharing agreement.

More than 30 states participate in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which helps ensure voter rolls are updated to avoid fraud, but Republican-led states are withdrawing from the agreement or threatening to do so in response to Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election, reported the Washington Post.

“Why would people who purport to want more election integrity seek to damage the best tool out there?” said David Becker, who helped found ERIC in 2012 with seven states as head of the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “The only thing I can come up with is they don’t actually want election integrity. They want more chaos.”

Trump allies claim the organization is a left-wing outfit that shares sensitive voter data with liberal groups, but ERIC leaders say the pact gives incentives to Republicans, who emphasize rigorous list maintenance, and Democrats, who encourage voter registration, to participate -- and 34 states led by both parties have taken part by sharing voter registration rolls and motor vehicle records to identify and prosecute anyone who double votes across state lines.

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“That’s its value,” said one state election official. “I can buy the [change of address and Social Security records]. But what I can’t do is spend millions of dollars to create matching software to match the information in those files to my voter rolls.”

ERIC's members will meet March 17 to vote on a proposal that would require member states to conduct the voter-registration and list-maintenance functions at least once, and make them optional going forward, but the program's backers say some reforms are necessary to keep Republican-led states from withdrawing altogether and bringing the organization closer to collapse.

“The stakes are very high here," said Minnesota secretary of state Steve Simon, a Democrat who backs ERIC.