Voter roll org for 33 states is linked to leftists, raising concerns over their registration goals

An election integrity group report on the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which helps clean up voter rolls and register voters, found that states not part of the leftist-backed organization are actually more efficient at keeping the rolls up to date. The report implies, however, that it may not be a question of efficiency, but rather political activism that best explains their results.

Verity Vote, a volunteer election integrity group, found that ERIC is connected to left-wing organizations and backers, The Epoch Times reported. For example, ERIC's founder is David Becker, who also founded the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which claims "The 2020 general election was the most secure in American history" and received nearly $70 million from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. 

Becker was also a former trial attorney in the Voting Section of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division who was described by former colleagues as "a hard-core leftist."

To comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, states are required to "make a reasonable effort to remove ineligible people from voter rolls." While it is normally done by state or county governments, 33 states and Washington, D.C. have contracted with ERIC to accomplish that goal. 

ERIC's "sole mission" is to assist "states to improve the accuracy of America's voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens," according to its website. However, Verity Vote found that states that work with ERIC to clean up their voter rolls remove an average of 1.9 percent from their rolls, while states not using ERIC remove an average of 2.3 percent.

The organization also leads a get-out-the-vote operation where lists of eligible but unregistered (EBU) residents are given to states, which must then contact each person listed and inform them of the process of registering to vote. The number of EBUs exceeds the suggested removals from voter rolls by 10 times, according to Verity Vote's report.

The report also mentioned that ERIC receives personal information on people who visited places where they could have registered to vote but didn't, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, which informs ERIC with information that could be used to target potential voters who they might prefer.

“This appears to violate federal law,” the report reads. “The NVRA prohibits states from sharing any records that relate to a declination to register to vote, or to the identity of a voter registration agency through which any particular voter is registered.”

The article points out that ERIC’s website claims that it has handled 56 million voters.