Glenn Youngkin Kept Virginia ERIC-Free. We Were Glad to Help.

Restoration of America and the Voter Reference Foundation have been fighting ERIC for years, and it’s paying off

Virginians chose Glenn Youngkin to take our commonwealth in a new direction in 2021 and it’s paying dividends.

On March 8, Gov. Youngkin vetoed a Democrat-pushed bill (SB 606) to forcibly return Virginia to the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the Left’s biggest get-out-the-vote machine for registering new Democratic voters. Recall that Election Commissioner Susan Beals, a Youngkin appointee, withdrew from ERIC in May 2023.

Restoration News has extensively documented ERIC’s origins and role in juicing Democrat turnout over the past decade—something Virginia taxpayers were forced to subsidize while surrendering their private, personal identifying information to left-wing political operatives. That’s why we applauded Virginia’s departure and have urged the Governor to keep Virginia out of that partisan, destructive organization. And we’re not alone.

“The citizens of Virginia had a big win with Governor Youngkin’s veto of SB606, which would have put the state into ERIC, a multi-state program that purports to facilitate voter list maintenance, but which actually places voter list maintenance records out of public view,” Voter Reference Foundation executive director Gina Swoboda told Restoration News. “Transparency is at the core of voter confidence and ERIC continues to require member-states to hold as confidential the very voter list maintenance records that the public is empowered to view under the National Voter Registration Act in order to conduct their proper oversight of these activities.

“ERIC has become an unfunded mandatory voter registration drive that walls off voter list maintenance activities from public oversight. Virginia can do better and now they will have that chance,” she added.

(Read Voter Reference Foundation’s ERIC Letter to Gov. Youngkin Here)

For over a decade, ERIC has masqueraded as an innocuous tool for helping states clean their voter rolls—yet quietly forces them to bloat the rolls instead. And ERIC has funneled information on over 200 million Americans to Democrat-aligned political groups, like the “Zuck Bucks” group Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), headed by ex-ERIC director David Becker.

“[ERIC] is the single most effective voter registration drive in the history of the United States,” Becker boasted in 2018.

Democrats in the General Assembly clearly agree—which is why they’ve made forcing the commonwealth back into this partisan group a top priority shortly after retaking the House last November.

Thank God for Glenn Youngkin.

(READ OUR REPORT: ERIC—The Best Data Money Can’t Buy)