Nonpartisan ERIC System Is Still Under Threat — And So Are Voting Rights

Beginning in January 2022, nine states left the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonpartisan tool for ensuring accurate voter lists — the result of a sustained campaign by election deniers and allies of former President Trump. While most of the withdrawals came in a wave in the spring and summer of 2023, there remains a danger that more states could depart from the organization before this year’s monumental election.

Last month, delegates in Utah’s Salt Lake, Weber, and Davis counties approved nearly identical resolutions calling on the state to leave ERIC. And in March, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill that would have required the state, which had withdrawn in May 2023, to restart its ERIC membership. That same month, Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams told USA Today that while he still believed in ERIC’s mission, the departures of other states — along with the voter-roll information they share as part of the consortium — had led him to consider withdrawal. (Adams has reportedly signed on to letters urging New York and New Hampshire to join ERIC; Newsday reported last month that New York was expected to join.) 

At the same time, the Republican National Committee and others are filing lawsuits concerning the very thing ERIC was designed to help with: maintaining up-to-date voter rolls. This includes “election integrity” lawsuits related to claims about inaccurate voter rolls. For example, in March the RNC and the Nevada Republican Party sued five Nevada county clerks and the state secretary of state alleging that the counties had “inordinately high” voter registration numbers and that Nevada’s inaccurate voter rolls violated federal law. The RNC also sued Michigan’s secretary of state, similarly claiming the state failed to maintain accurate voter lists. 

Election experts worry that these lawsuits could amplify unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, overwhelm election offices with data requests and voter challenges, and unfairly purge some voters from the rolls. Moreover, states that did withdraw from ERIC have failed to find anything that could match ERIC’s effectiveness. For example, despite a Texas law requiring the state to participate in an information-sharing program, Texas has yet to find a replacement since its departure in 2023; in fact, records produced to American Oversight indicated that lawmakers had instituted cost restrictions on potential new programs that they knew in advance would be unworkable.

American Oversight has been investigating the campaign to dismantle ERIC, including how right-wing groups have pushed unproven alternatives that threaten voters’ privacy and access to the ballot by encouraging other citizens to challenge voter registrations. Records we have uncovered have provided key details on these dangerous and often ineffective replacements.

One of these ERIC “alternatives” is EagleAI, a database used by right-wing activists on the hunt for voter fraud. EagleAI is supported by the Election Integrity Network, an organization led by Cleta Mitchell, a longtime proponent of voting restrictions who aided Trump in his attempt to remain in power in 2020. 

Election experts have warned about the use of EagleAI. Despite warnings from voting-rights experts and the state elections board that the software “draws inaccurate conclusions” and could not be trusted to provide reliable information, Georgia’s Columbia County agreed in December 2023 to use EagleAI. American Oversight obtained a software license agreement between Columbia County and EagleAI. 

Other records obtained by American Oversight include an email from the county elections director to EagleAI founder Rick Richards just two months before the agreement asking about an alleged “hack” that had been mentioned at a county election board meeting. Richards acknowledged in his email that EagleAI servers became inoperative and noted that EagleAI “contains only public available data” — a shortcoming of the system compared with ERIC, whose secure use of information from non-public DMV databases makes it reliable and effective. 

Another tool promoted as an alternative to ERIC is VoteRef.com. The site is run by the Voter Reference Foundation, which is led by Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda, and is designed to be a resource for voter-fraud activists who want to inspect voter rolls. 

Voting-rights and privacy advocates have voiced concerns VoteRef could be used to compromise individual privacy, intimidate voters, cause mass cancellations of voting registrations, and inundate local election offices with burdensome, time-consuming, and inaccurate challenges — concerns that were revived in April when a federal judge ruled that New Mexico election officials must provide voter rolls to VoteRef.

Records obtained by American Oversight show that information gleaned from VoteRef has fueled numerous voter challenges and fraud allegations.

American Oversight’s report “The Campaign to Dismantle ERIC,” released in December, details how:

• The same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election worked behind the scenes to influence the ERIC exodus by promoting false claims and conspiracy theories, priming states for post-election chaos that could be used to deny election results in 2024;
• States have scrambled to find viable replacements — none of which provide ERIC’s security, reliability, or effectiveness; and
• Election denial activists are now pushing their own ERIC alternatives that would make it easier to challenge the voting rights of thousands.

Since publishing our report, we’ve continued to publish more documents and articles related to ERIC departures. 

• Text messages we obtained, reported on by Votebeat, provided yet more evidence of how a falsehood-riddled article on a right-wing website influenced Louisiana’s withdrawal from ERIC in 2022.
• Records we obtained and detailed in the report showed that guidance about Missouri’s plans for post-ERIC voter list maintenance was not provided to local election authorities until months after the state withdrew, with election authorities and experts concerned about the lack of a clear plan. A January report from the state auditor also criticized Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s withdrawal from ERIC without a new system in place, raising concerns this could hamper local election authorities.
• American Oversight and the Campaign Legal Center sent a letter to Georgia election officials asking that they investigate a potential violation of state law in Columbia County’s agreement with EagleAI.
• In March, we hosted a virtual event that featured experts from All Voting is Local, the Brennan Center, the Campaign Legal Center, and American Oversight about the election denial movement and its anti-ERIC campaign. Read the transcript of this panel discussion here.