NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he recent criticism of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which has now led some five states to withdraw from the partnership, is puzzling at first glance. After all, why would any ethical elections supervisor, governor, or secretary of state refuse to utilize the best available tool to keep voter lists accurate and up-to-date? Honest elections begin with clean voter rolls.
ERIC is an organization of 28 states that share data to keep their respective voter lists accurate and encourage people to register to vote. It’s run and funded by the member states. It was started in 2012, and Georgia joined in 2019. Since that time, it has helped election officials in my office identify hundreds of thousands of inaccurate voter records on Georgia’s rolls. Among the 23 states participating in ERIC in 2020, the data identified more than 1.5 million voters who had moved out of the state in which they were registered, 1.3 million who had moved within the state in which they were registered, 135,000 voters with duplicate registrations, and nearly 73,000 deceased people who were still on the voter rolls. That’s more than 3 million inaccurate voter records in just 23 states — records that could have potentially affected election outcomes.
ERIC never touches Georgia’s (or any other member state’s) voter-registration system; it simply analyzes the voter-registration and motor-vehicle-department data member states send it, along with official federal death and change-of-address data, and then generates reports for state election officials like those in my office to use for updating voter lists, removing ineligible voters, investigating potential cases of illegal voting, and encouraging unregistered voters to register. (This eligible-but-unregistered, or EBU, category is nearly insignificant in Georgia, since virtually every eligible Georgian is already registered.)
None of the states that have left the ERIC partnership have said how they will find duplicate registrations or dead voters without it. None has said how they plan to maintain accurate voter lists without ERIC. In Georgia alone, some 10,000 people move without updating their voter-registration information every month. Without the service provided by ERIC, we could see over 100,000 inaccurate voter records each year — in a state that the winning presidential candidate in the last election carried by only 11,789 votes. In a state that can be that close, why would anyone want voter lists that were inaccurate?
The answer lies in the application of cui buono and cynicism. Activists on the fringe right and the fringe left both want elections to be subjective and open to interpretation so that they can win in court when they don’t win at the ballot box. Left-leaning lawyers are ready to run to a judge after any election, alleging that some set of voters has been “suppressed.” Though they’re not as practiced at it, lawyers for the far Right stand by, too, ready to accuse their political opponents of using “fraudulent votes” to win. This abuse of our electoral process is much easier when voter records are inaccurate or out-of-date.
Former president Trump wants elections to be subjective and imprecise, because he believes he would have better luck influencing outcomes if they didn’t go his way. He’s not wrong about that. Without accurate registration lists, thousands of voters could face eligibility challenges in the lead-up to an election, and ballots could potentially be disqualified after they were cast.
Inaccurate voter rolls assist the election-denying Left as well. Stacey Abrams made election denial into a cottage industry of lawsuits and political fundraising, while claiming tens of thousands of voters were being “suppressed” during her run for governor of Georgia. (They weren’t, and Georgia saw record-breaking voter turnout in the 2022 midterms.)
Elections need to be secure and accurate so that opposing candidates compete on the strength of their respective ideas and character. The process must be accessible, and the results should be auditable. The public deserves the most accurate elections we can manage, and accurate results begin with accurate voter-registration lists.
The states that have withdrawn from ERIC have set a lower standard for their elections, and done a disservice to their voters.