More self-serving outrage from the GOP
Without getting overly wonky here, I’ve studied the Electronic Registration Information Centers (ERIC) efforts at voter roll maintenance for several years.
Multiple red states in recent weeks have exited the ERIC network. The consortium of over two dozen states (it was over 30) share voter registration data in a coordinated effort to eliminate multi-state registrants, to identify registrants who have moved within and between states, to identify those who have died, and to identify people who vote in more than one state in an election.
There seem to be quite a few of the last group in Florida, one of several red states that exited ERIC last week.
Readers who remember Kansas’ Kris Kobach’s defunct Interstate Crosscheck system and its history of bad data matching, take note. Originally a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, ERIC is what Interstate Crosscheck purported to be and was not. Kobach’s real project was not election integrity but promoting the notion that voter fraud was widespread and photo IDs necessary to combating the phantom menace. Republicans loved it.
The Washington Post Editorial Board this morning reflects on the red states now exiting ERIC in the wake of last year’s “expose” by The Gateway Pundit. The three-part posting alleged that George Soros was behind ERIC’s “left-wing plot to add more racial minorities to the voter rolls,” the Board reports.
“If Republicans are serious about protecting election integrity and the rule of law, they’d celebrate ERIC,” the Board writes without irony:
The nonprofit association, which is led by its own members, formed in 2012 after a report showed that one in eight voter registrations across the country were no longer valid. Four of the seven charter members were Republican-led states. By last year, 34 states plus D.C. had joined — including the six tightest presidential battlegrounds. The system compiles voter participation records from member states along with change-of-address records from the U.S. Postal Service and death records from the Social Security Administration. The pooling of information has identified more than 11.5 million people who have moved across state lines and over 60 million potential voters who are unregistered.
It’s that last ERIC function, identifying potentially eligible but unregistered voters (EBUs), that now gives Republicans heartburn. It’s barely a footnote in ERIC’s contract with member states that every two years they agree to send postcards (not voter registration forms or ballots, as righties will allege) to EBUs with information on how to register to vote if they are eligible. ERIC provides the EBU targeting lists; the states do the rest. (While Democrats are still sending people with clipboards to streetcorners and farmers’ markets.)
Not one politician I’ve talked to about ERIC had any idea about the voter registation component if they were even aware of ERIC.
When Florida joined the system in 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) touted ERIC’s ability to keep the state’s voter rolls up to date and boasted that “it will increase voter participation.” Last summer, Mr. DeSantis touted the system by name as a critical tool in his efforts to prosecute anyone who illegally voted. The Office of Election Crimes and Security, which Mr. DeSantis created, said in a January report that ERIC had identified more than 1,000 voters who might have cast ballots in Florida and another member state.
As I’ve noted, Florida mailed 2.2 million ERIC postcards in 2020. A couple of studies (2013 and 2020) have shown the mailings result in a roughly 1% rise in voter registration and a 0.9% increase in voter turnout. (Sound small?) That is what Republicans really object to.
With MAGA dominating the GOP and with 2024 elections already percolating, Republicans wanting to position themselves as MAGA darlings contend that there is something deeply nefarious about the very voter list efforts they celebrated until recently.
The Post concludes:
The attacks on the database aren’t really about ERIC. They’re part of a broader, multiyear campaign to bully elections officials. Demagogues have planted seeds of doubt in the minds of Americans that their votes don’t count. Now many of these same people are trying to destroy one of the country’s best tools for fighting the rare cases of voter fraud that do occur.
Conservatives don’t want the wrong people to vote. Never have.
Update: Noted the contrast between how ERIC works and how Democrats register voters.