Hypocrisy Is the Hallmark of States That Refuse to Share Voter Rolls with Feds
The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) should not exist.
When a movement gains ground in corrupting voting systems, it doesn't give it up without a fight, and right now, the front line in election integrity is clean voter rolls. That is, the accuracy of the list of eligible, registered voters in each state. When someone moves, dies, or is improperly registered to vote, they remain listed as a registered voter until election officials remove them. A dirty voter roll is ripe for fraudulent votes cast in the name of someone who no longer belongs on the list.
In the battle over how to manage voter rolls, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has exposed a glaring hypocrisy; some states, citing privacy rules, refuse to share voter registration data with the federal government. At the same time, many of the same states send that same data to the leftist nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). Apparently, the states see no privacy problem there, but the feds do. These data transfers to ERIC and its subsequent use of the data may be illegal.
The DOJ sent letters, on September 30, to ERIC and its related nonprofit, the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CIER), warning that they may be breaking a federal privacy law, the Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), which makes it "unlawful for any person knowingly to obtain or disclose personal information from a motor vehicle record for any not permitted use." The penalty is a criminal fine. The DOJ has demanded loads of documents to investigate.
"We hope you will agree to voluntarily comply with these requests rather than forcing the United States to take further action," said the letter, signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr.
To grasp the depth of deception some states engage in, it helps to understand two things: what ERIC does, and how strenuously some states object to sharing the same data with the Trump Administration.
States Share Private Data (What ERIC Does)
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 requires states to make a reasonable effort to remove ineligible people from voter rolls. Traditionally, this is the work of county and state officials—your tax dollars still pay them to do it—but since 2012, some states have outsourced voter roll maintenance to ERIC. Currently, the District of Columbia and 27 states—overwhelmingly Democrat-led—are ERIC members. Restoration News Founder and Executive Editor Hayden Ludwig’s reporting on ERIC has become source material for the feds.
Using lists of data including an individual’s name, address, driver’s license number, last four digits of Social Security number, date of birth, phone number, and email address, ERIC identifies voters who have moved, died, are not registered, or who may have voted illegally.
Member states give ERIC voter registration records, plus all the records of individuals who went to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), including those who didn’t register to vote when applying for a driver's license. ERIC member states also provide ERIC with data on people who do business with the state anywhere they can register to vote, such as applications for public assistance or to get a concealed carry gun license.
Wait a minute, why does ERIC need the private information of people who never registered to vote to clean the voter rolls? It’s because ERIC also makes lists of eligible-but-unregistered voters, and it requires member states to attempt to get them registered.
One can imagine how useful that data would be to someone harvesting votes: Want to register more Democrats? Comb through the data for women under 30 seeking Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Want to avoid Republicans? Skip anyone over 50 who applied for a gun license.
ERIC shares data—your private data—with CEIR, which creates lists of potential voters to target for voter registration. ERIC gives these lists back to the states. Both ERIC and CEIR were founded by David Becker, who uses all the Democratic talking points, like warning that "election deniers" are a "threat to our democracy." Becker has been openly adversarial against President Donald Trump and his followers for years.
Letters sent from DOJ to ERIC and CEIR were nearly identical. They ask for a list of all people and organizations with whom ERIC and CEIR shared information obtained from state DMVs and all records related to such sharing. DOJ wants a written, detailed explanation of the services members receive, and a list of all research projects undertaken so far, with information about any third parties that were involved in the research projects.
States Refuse to Share Private Data
In response to Trump’s order to identify anyone who may be voting illegally, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division asked states to share their unredacted voter rolls, including the voter’s full name, date of birth, residential address, driver’s license number, or the last four digits of the registrant’s Social Security number. Notably, the government asks for less information than ERIC requires.
Citing privacy concerns, some 30 states refused to share their voter registration lists. The DOJ brought federal lawsuits against them. Many cases were ultimately dismissed, and some are ongoing; the status of the cases is constantly changing. You can see a map at Voter Reference Foundation’s Voter List Accuracy tab. At this writing, lawsuits are pending in Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Restoration News Investigative Researcher Jacob Grandstaff recently offered some context about these cases.
Hypocrisy on Steroids
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state since 2019, leaned into the privacy concern in his battle to keep the feds from seeing the state’s complete, unredacted voter rolls. In court filings, there is a five-page letter drawn up by General Counsel Charlene McGowan. In it, she defends Raffensperger’s decision to refuse sharing all the data with the feds.
Georgia law prohibits the disclosure of voters’ full date of birth, Social Security number, and driver’s license number. Accordingly, in compliance with state law, and in consultation with the Georgia Attorney General’s office, the voter list provided excludes "sensitive information that implicates special privacy concerns." … Nevertheless, the records that we are submitting are more than sufficient to demonstrate Georgia’s compliance with the [National Voter Registration Act].
It’s worth noting that the federal government created everyone’s Social Security number and connects them to birthdates. It likely has many addresses too. The federal government is at low risk of abusing the same data it already has in another format.
While Raffensperger cries about privacy, Georgia is an ERIC member, and, as such, it must provide ERIC with the name, address, driver’s license number, last four digits of Social Security Number, date of birth, phone number, and email address of registered voters and those who do business with the state. Again, that is more than the federal government asks for. Anti-Trump ERIC hands the data over to anti-Trump CEIR, and who knows where it travels from there.
Pennsylvania is another ERIC member state that has spent lots of money in court trying to prevent the feds from getting a look at its unredacted voter rolls. Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania's secretary of state for the last three years, oversaw the 2020 ballot counting in Philadelphia. In 2023, former President Joe Biden awarded Schmidt the Presidential Citizens Medal because Trump named Schmidt in a 2020 mean tweet. So, it’s on brand for Schmidt to run interference for everything Trump-related. His letter to the DOJ, found in court filings and provided by a trusted source, reads:
Your letter dated August 14 specifically asked for detailed personal and confidential information, including driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers for all Pennsylvania voters. This request, and reported efforts to collect broad data on millions of Americans, represent a concerning attempt to expand the federal government's role in our country's election process. Please know that the Department of State takes seriously its obligation to safeguard the integrity and accuracy of Pennsylvania’s voter rolls as well as the security of Pennsylvanians’ personal information.
Predictably, Schmidt decided there was no legal justification for Pennsylvania to share the data with the DOJ.
Same thing in Nevada, where state Attorney General Aaron Ford crowed in a press release:
The Trump administration's attempt to force our state to share these unredacted voter rolls was nothing more than an intimidation tactic designed to continue the president's campaign to sow doubt in our elections. Nevada’s elections are free, fair and safe, and our state will protect the sensitive data of all Nevadans.
Yes, while seeking credit from the public for protecting their information, Ford knows Nevada gives ERIC all their data.
ERIC Likely 'Unlawful'
Those recent letters from DOJ to ERIC and CEIR point to the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, as a safeguard against "any not permitted use" of DMV records. This means states should not share that information with ERIC, and ERIC certainly should not pass it on to CEIR.
Notably, the government has been managing our data for decades.
Federal, state, and local government agencies have, since 1986, used the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program to verify the citizenship and immigration status of noncitizens applying for public benefits. Trump expanded the SAVE Program last year, directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to add more data so it can be used to verify citizenship status at voter registration. Trump directed the Social Security Administration to make its records available to DHS for that purpose.
States may voluntarily share their voter rolls in the SAVE database. Some states have done so. If all states shared with the SAVE program, it would have more voter information than ERIC, which only has member-state data. It would eliminate any reason for ERIC to exist and make voter verification more efficient.
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