State Rep. Wes Allen (R-Troy), candidate for Alabama Secretary of State, on Monday announced his intentions to withdraw the state’s membership from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which he alleged was partially funded by progressive financier George Soros.
Allen vowed to pull Alabama’s membership from ERIC on his first day in office due to the organization being what he called a “Soros-funded, leftist group.” The State of Louisiana last week announced its withdrawal from ERIC after fielding allegations that it held “potential questionable funding sources.”
In response to the claim, Secretary of State John Merrill contended that ERIC was not a “leftist” group funded by Soros but rather by annual dues paid by its member states.
According to Merrill, ERIC was founded by its original seven-member states of Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, Utah, Virginia and Washington with the assistance of non-governmental organization Pew Charitable Trusts.
In a Tuesday release, Merrill advised that the Alabama Legislature in 2015 passed an act which authorized “the Secretary of State to enter into agreements to share information with other states in order to maintain the statewide voter registration database.” Upon Merrill’s request, then-freshman lawmaker and current Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth sponsored the legislation.
The State of Alabama in 2016 gained certification to become an ERIC member state.
In announcing his pledge to pull Alabama’s membership from the organization, should his candidacy for secretary of state prove successful, Allen asserted that in some cases, sensitive voter information such as dates of birth and partial security numbers are provided to ERIC.
Merrill maintained that ERIC was the “only organization capable of providing the necessary data for proper voter list maintenance.”
“In Alabama, ERIC is used to preserve a clean and accurate voter list and to contact eligible residents who are not registered voters. Each month, we provide ERIC with a voters list and driver’s license data, and we receive information from ERIC for voter list maintenance in return,” advised Merrill. “Monthly, our office receives a list of voter records that potentially need to be removed or inactivated based on deceased records from the Social Security Administration, potential duplicate voter records in Alabama, or voters that have potentially moved out of the state.”
Merrill asserted that ERIC had identified over 19,000 potentially deceased registered Alabama voters that died in the state or another ERIC member state. According to the secretary of state, 98% of the identified voter records are no longer held on Alabama voter rolls.
Additionally, over 222,000 voter records of potential cross-state movers were identified by ERIC from driver’s license information obtained from other ERIC member states. Of this, Merrill said 90% of those records were no longer on voting rolls in Alabama.
Due to ERIC assisting his office with matching voter records of potential duplicate registered voters, 95% of such records were removed from Alabama voter rolls.
“Annually, our office receives a list of individuals that have received a driver’s license or non-driver’s identification card and are not registered voters,” stated Merrill. “Once a year, we reach out to all eligible individuals via a postcard that contains information on how to register to vote. Every two years, with data from ERIC, we perform a voter participation review to determine whether individuals potentially voted more than once in Alabama or voted once in Alabama and once in another state for the same election.”
He continued, “These election security measures would not be possible without our partnership with ERIC. Our office does not have direct access to other states’ voter databases or driver’s license records. ERIC does. Our office does not have the authority or capability to securely store other states’ information. ERIC does. Our office does not have the certification and license requirement to access the Social Security Administration Death Master Index. ERIC does. Finally, neither the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency nor our office have the ability to compare driver’s license records for our state with other states for the purpose of voter list maintenance. ERIC does.”
ERIC had assisted the state in removing more than 1,350,000 ineligible individuals from voter rolls over the past six years, according to Merrill.
Merrill warned that pulling Alabama’s membership from ERIC could jeopardize the state being known as what he referred to as “the gold standard for election integrity throughout the nation.” He further proclaimed that the state’s membership agreement with ERIC prohibits the organization from “selling, sharing, or disclosing Alabama’s data to any person, party, organization, or group.”
Merrill concluded in part by stating his desire that whoever succeeds him as secretary of state would continue to implement practices that make it “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Dylan Smith is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
