Alabama Secretary-elect Wes Allen has announced that he will withdraw the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), an electoral roll management system with politically compromised connections.
“I made a promise that I would withdraw Alabama from ERIC, and I’m keeping that promise,” Allen said in a statement. “I have notified them by registered mail that upon my inauguration on January 16, 2023, Alabama will immediately and permanently cease providing information about citizens of the State of Alabama to their organization and that we will no longer be involved in any aspect of the ERIC program .”
As previously reported, ERIC is an electoral roll management organization used by 33 states and purportedly exists to identify duplicate or deceased registrants (by cross-referencing state electoral and DMV records) and thereby state electoral rolls to clean”. Alabama joined ERIC in 2015 and currently pays approximately $25,000 per year for its membership.
However, member states may not be aware that ERIC was founded by far-left political activist David Becker, who has devoted his life to attacking conservatives and promoting left-wing politics. Becker also founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), one of two left-wing groups that funneled $419 million in Mark Zuckerberg grants to mostly blue districts of swing states, thereby funding Democratic turnout actions by government electoral offices in the year 2020. ERIC shares voter roll data – including records of unregistered citizens – with CEIR, which then reportedly creates targeted mailing lists for unregistered but likely Democratic voters and sends them back to states for contact for voter registration.
Furthermore, according to Verity Vote, the government watchdog, ERIC doesn’t really clean state voter rolls, it inflates them. Although the member states supposedly have to clean their electoral rolls, nothing happens. An audit by Michigan’s Auditor General in March 2022 found that the state elections bureau had not adequately sanitized its electoral rolls, even though Michigan joined the ERIC in 2019. Likewise, the District of Columbia (another ERIC member) has been sued for default in its roles.
While Alabama’s outgoing Secretary of State, John Merrill, has repeatedly signaled his support for ERIC, Allen has campaigned to remove the state from the system. Rather than relying on ERIC to clean up Alabama voter rolls, Allen plans to use change of address information from the United States Postal Service, driver’s license records from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, and death certificates from the Alabama Department of Public Health to keep accurate roles.
Alabama is the second ERIC member state to withdraw from the Compact. Louisiana suspended its participation in January over similar concerns.
Victoria Marshall is a contributor to The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in Politics and a minor in Journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.