Florida sheds voter integrity system because of racist conspiracy theory

Florida is withdrawing from a bipartisan interstate system designed to prevent election fraud, after right-wing activists made it a target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, reported the Orlando Sentinel on Monday.

"Secretary of State Cord Byrd announced the state was terminating its membership with the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, just months after he credited the multi-state organization for helping identify people who voted in Florida and another state," reported Steven Lemongello and Jeffrey Schweers.

"ERIC allows elections officials to cross-reference their voter rolls with those of other member states. It scours databases for voter and motor vehicle registrations, U.S. Postal Service addresses and Social Security death records to compare lists of voters and keep the rolls up to date," said the report. "The system also detects when someone tries to vote in more than one state. Three residents of The Villages were charged with voting more than once in the 2020 presidential election, and Lake and Osceola counties flagged 13 additional cases that same year."

Several Republican and Democratic local officials said they were blindsided by this move, and were given no warning.

“Withdrawing from ERIC will ensure the data privacy of Florida voters is protected,” said Byrd's office. This comes after Missouri and West Virginia also withdrew from the system.

It also comes as right-wing activists have pushed a baseless claim that the system is controlled by George Soros, the billionaire Hungarian Jewish philanthropist who is constantly targeted by anti-Semitic theories.

"According to the Washington Post, ERIC was originally founded in part by Pew Charitable Trusts, which in turn receives funding from Soros’ organization. But ERIC operates using taxpayer funds from the member states and has not received funding from Soros," said the report. "That did not stop the American Policy Center, a right-wing think tank, from alleging ERIC is an 'artificial intelligence gathering system and left-wing voter registration program, associated with blatantly inaccurate voter rolls in its members.'"

Byrd himself has ties to the far-right fringe, according to the report — he previously refused to acknowledge President Joe Biden's win in 2020, and his wife, whom DeSantis appointed to the state Board of Education, has defended the Nazi-adjacent QAnon movement.