top of page

MFEI News & Commentary

Search

West Virginia, Florida and Missouri announce WITHDRAWAL FROM ERIC

March 6, 2023



Friends,


Today we saw a HUGE win for the citizens of Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia. The three states announced they were joining Alabama and Louisiana in terminating their states' agreements with the three-employee, third-party ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center).


Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, along with Florida and West Virginia sent letters to Executive Director Shane Hamlin stating their departure from the Electronic Registration Information Center known as ERIC.


For several months Missouri has been leading other states in an effort to reform the ERIC system by addressing significant concerns and implementing changes in ERIC.


“We have worked hard over the last several years to implement procedures that will make Missouri elections better, voter rolls more accurate, and bring greater trust to the election process,” Ashcroft said. “Voter confidence is compromised when individuals vote in more than one state and nothing is done. It appears that ERIC will not make the necessary changes to address these concerns, therefore, it is time to move on.”


Cord Byrd, Secretary of State for the Sunshine State, said,“I have an obligation to protect the personal information of Florida’s citizens, which the ERIC agreement requires us to share. Florida has tried to back reforms to increase protections, but these protections were refused. Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC.”


“Our ERIC-related investigation, administrative complaints and educational efforts are having a real-world effect. Success!” said Erick Kaardal, special counsel to the Thomas More Society, the law firm that represents Pure Integrity Michigan Elections (PIME) and Michigan Fair Elections (MFE). “Of course, there is still more work to do,” Kaardal added. “We still have to win in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states, but the red states removing themselves is a sign of progress.”





Since January of last year, PIME has sounded the alarm that the opaque and biased ERIC system has been taking voters’ personal identifying information from the states’ DMV data and sending it on to unnamed, third-party leftwing groups. These undisclosed, private groups then use that data—information they could not obtain otherwise—to target partisan voter registrations and unfairly affect election outcomes.

1. Attempts to influence our elections exposed 2. Alabama withdraws from ERIC 3. FOIA Denied: No info on ERIC and QVF from local clerk; 4. Tools for discussing the need to exit ERIC with your legislator; 5. Who's watching the watchers? Opaque 3rd parties control our personal info & elections in 98% of US 6. PIME HAVA complaint for SOS Benson joining Mich. in 3rd Party ERIC; 7. Zuckerbucks and ERIC: Biased refs call game in favor of one side 8. Momentum Grows as ERIC exposed 9. CALL TO ACTION. Alert Legislators: The Left's Taxpayer-Funded Voter Registration Machine, ERIC; 10. Wisconsin’s participation in ERIC violates federal law, attorney claims 11. New evidence: Politically compromised ERIC bloats Michigan's voter rolls to crisis levels; 12. CALL TO ACTION: Alert your legislators. Politically compromised ERIC inserts bias into voter rolls 13. CALL TO ACTION: ERIC slips non-citizens onto voter rolls through Mich. DMV

“Today, Florida, West Virginia and Missouri said NO,” report Kerri Toloczko with the Conservative Partnership Institute and senior advisor with the Florida Fair Elections Coalition. “They saw the problems of the ERIC system and listened to citizen concerns. They took action.”


A working group of ERIC member states proposed necessary changes to the ERIC Membership agreement. Among the requests were increased protections for confidential voter information.


Also of import was the need to limit the power of ex-officio partisan members of the ERIC board. “These ex-officio partisan members,” the media release stated, “are not representatives of specific states and have undue influence over the organization and its decisions.”


However, ERIC exhibited an unwillingness to address the significant threats to electoral integrity, so Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced they were terminating their agreements with ERIC and withdrawing from the system.



Fact is stranger than fiction: ERIC's offices are non-existent.


After he won his election, Alabama’s new Secretary of State, Wes Allen, decided to remove Alabama from ERIC. Then recently he had to be in Washington for a convention of Secretaries of State, so he decided to drop by the offices of ERIC. Their listed address is 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Ste 600, Washington, DC 20036.


“Since I was in town, I went to see the ERIC Headquarters," Allen said. "What I found was that there was no ERIC headquarters at that address. There were no employees. There were no servers. There was no ERIC presence of any kind. Instead. I found a virtual office that is rentable by the day. What it was missing was people, servers, and any sign of the ERIC team.”




Florida SOS Press Release:









0 views0 comments

Comments


Signup for Updates from MFEI!

We are a federated network of citizen organizations, leaders, and activists aligning their individual missions to work together to build a permanent election integrity infrastructure in every county in Michigan, to provide ongoing citizen oversight, transparency, and accountability of Michigan elections.

*Important Notes and Disclaimers for Election Integrity Network National Working Groups and coalition calls*

  • We operate under strict 501 (c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan guidelines. Please do not make any comments during the call or in the chat that are directly related to any campaign or candidate running for office or could be considered an endorsement or opposition of that candidate.

  • All calls are “off the record.” This means that no members of the media are allowed on our calls and this rule also applies to participants. No comment or presentation can be shared outside of the call without the express permission of the speaker. This includes the call "Notes" available to our participants. 

  • We always welcome new participants but ask that all newcomers register with their own registration link. Please do not forward your personal link to another participant.

  • For the security of the call, if you join by phone, you may be asked to unmute and provide your name. 

  • This meeting is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice or instruction to lobby on behalf of any issue or organization.

© 2024 by Michigan Fair Elections Institute

bottom of page