News Roundup: The Campaign to Dismantle ERIC

As 2024 approaches, the election denial movement has been laying the groundwork for more post-election chaos, thanks to its attacks on a bipartisan system used to update voter rolls.

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As 2024 rapidly approaches, the election denial movement has been laying the groundwork for more post-election chaos and confusion, thanks to its attacks on a bipartisan system used by states to keep voter rolls up to date.

That system, the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center, has been targeted by many of the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election — and that pressure campaign is the subject of an in-depth and wide-reaching new report published this week by American Oversight.

The report, “The Campaign to Dismantle ERIC,” details how anti-democratic activists have worked behind the scenes to push nine Republican-led states to abandon ERIC — and what that means for our democracy in 2024.

The report, covered by Votebeat’s Jen Fifield, is based on thousands of pages of public records that American Oversight obtained through requests and litigation. It outlines how ERIC went from a non-controversial organization that quietly helped states securely maintain accurate voter rolls to a target of the election denial movement thanks to conspiracy theories and false claims.

The documents in the report reveal how state officials privately acknowledged the importance of ERIC before withdrawing — and how those states left the system without any adequate replacements in place.
It also shows how the exodus opened the door for Trump allies like Cleta Mitchell and others to promote their own alternatives that would make it easier for voter fraud activists to challenge the voting rights of other citizens.
The ERIC exodus and the misinformation surrounding it make states more vulnerable to false claims of election fraud in 2024 — the same claims that the election denial movement has used to undermine our democracy over the past three years.

“The effort to dismantle a nonpartisan, secure, and well-functioning system of voter registration data-sharing is a part of a broader attempt to undermine faith in our democracy and our country’s elections,” American Oversight’s Deputy Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said.

“These documents show how the election denial movement exerted undue influence over state leaders, effectively paving the way for Trump’s allies to sow chaos in the 2024 election,” Chukwu added. “As another election year approaches, it is vital for the American people to see how the same forces that sought to overturn 2020 are still working to undermine our democracy.”
We created a four-day newsletter series to explain our findings — and talk about why it matters. It starts this coming Monday, Dec. 18 — sign up here, and share it with others so that more people know about this threat to our democracy.

On the Records

Florida’s Anti-ESG Divestment
American Oversight obtained records that shed light on Florida’s abrupt divestment from the firm BlackRock Inc. in December 2022, which was spurred by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ongoing crusade against responsible environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.

Included in the documents are emails that show at least one high-ranking employee in the Florida State Board of Administration was surprised by the state suddenly barring BlackRock from managing about $2 billion of state treasury funds.
“Was this an anticipated move? And is there a transition plan in place?” A senior investment officer wrote in one email. “You may want to copy the whole group on reply – not sure how official I need to be here.”
We also obtained a letter from the Florida Department of Financial Services alleging that it could not locate any records responsive to a request we filed seeking any guidance or assessments related to the financial impacts of such divestments.
Read more about our related work investigating conservative attacks on ESG investing here.

The Right-wing Anti-ERIC Campaign
On Friday, we published a look at a key aspect of our “Campaign to Dismantle ERIC” report: How records we obtained in our far-reaching investigation reveal the motivations behind states leaving ERIC.

The documents suggest a strong connection between Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin’s decision to leave ERIC and a series of articles riddled with inaccuracies that was published in January 2022 by the fringe far-right website Gateway Pundit.

On Jan. 21 — the day after the first article and less than a week before Ardoin’s announcement about ERIC — an official in the secretary’s office forwarded Ardoin a statement from ERIC’s executive director that addressed falsehoods in the article.
That evening, Ardoin replied to top staff in his office: “I’m likely going to suspend our membership until we can make sure our data isn’t being used or supplie[d] to other organizations,” he wrote, indicating he was aware of both the article and ERIC’s refutation.
Ardoin texted also J. Christian Adams, a right-wing elections lawyer and ERIC critic, asking for a call to discuss ERIC, and was in touch with other prominent election deniers around that time.

Louisiana’s withdrawal in 2022 set the stage for a fast-growing anti-ERIC campaign, resulting in a wave of states exiting in early 2023. Documents highlight the speciousness of many officials’ public reasons for abandoning ERIC, with several top election administrators expressing concern.

Emails from January 2022 show Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s chief of staff characterized the first of the Gateway Pundit’s articles about ERIC as “horrible and misleading.”
In Texas, an assistant secretary of state emailed state Rep. Matt Shaheen’s chief of staff in January 2023 to respond to a question about ERIC, debunking the Gateway Pundit’s misinformation and explaining the benefits ERIC membership provided Texas.
Two months later, the day Ohio withdrew, then-state Director of Elections Amanda Grandjean wrote to ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin, “As you know, I really worked as hard as I possibly could to avoid this.”

News Roundup: The Campaign to Dismantle ERIC

On the Records

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Voting Rights

In the States

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