Republican Withdrawals from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC)

Beginning in January 2022, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin announced his state’s departure from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonpartisan nonprofit coalition created in 2012 to help states maintain accurate voter rolls. Within the next two years, a wave of Republican-led states followed suit—including Alabama, Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Texas—leaving roughly a third of the 31 member states plus the District of Columbia out of the program by 2024.

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Member states submit voter-registration and vehicle-registration data, which ERIC cross-references to identify duplicate registrations, deceased voters, and people who have moved between states. In 2022, ERIC flagged 2.4 million interstate moves, 7.3 million intrastate moves, 203,210 duplicate listings and 65,437 dead voters. Four years later, after the red-state exodus, those figures fell to roughly 604,000 interstate moves, 881,000 intrastate moves, 61,000 duplicates and 17,000 dead voters. The reduction reflects the loss of data contributions from the departing states, potentially limiting ERIC’s ability to clean voter rolls nationwide.

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John Merrill, Alabama’s secretary of state from 2015-2023, contended that the withdrawals were driven by partisan politics rather than any documented vulnerability in ERIC’s operations. He noted that “the people who decided that they did not want to be a part of ERIC did so for political reasons.” Merrill, now a consultant, reported facing pushback from “conservative ideologues” who accused him of embracing a “liberal agenda,” despite his description of ERIC as a neutral tool comparable to the Kansas Interstate Crosscheck System.

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• “These are all laudable, uncontroversial goals that have made our voter registration rolls more accurate and our elections more accessible and secure,” — Jonathan Diaz, an executive with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center

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• “The people who decided that they did not want to be a part of ERIC did so for political reasons,” — Alabama’s

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• “I think that the people who decided that they did not want to be a part of ERIC did so for political reasons,” — John Merrill

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These statements illustrate the tension between the program’s nonpartisan intent and the politically motivated departures that have reshaped its membership.

Mother Jones