Organizing Election Integrity Networks: ERIC’s first summit with red state legislators was successful in attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election

The responsibility to sort out this mess rests with the states. Although federal and state laws require states to maintain accurate voter rolls, they do not have a way of coordinating with one another. The existence of searchable voter data itself is relatively new: As recently as 2000, only seven states had computerized statewide voter databases.

More than 24 million voters who have not been removed from the rolls and nearly 600,000 dead people who have not been removed from the rolls, have been identified through Marguerite’s work. In addition, ERIC requires that member states reach out to eligible but unregistered voters, although it is difficult to determine just how many new voters have signed up as a result.

ERIC did all of this in a true example of bipartisanship. “It’s a place where red and blue states were able to come together, have this really boring but really effective data system for keeping the right people on the rolls and removing the wrong people from the rolls,” said Danielle Lang, the senior director of the voting-rights program at the Campaign Legal Center.

“The STRATEGY is to run a campaign directed at key Florida legislators,” the group wrote in the post, which included a list of the state’s lawmakers and contact information. Hand delivered letters, email, phone calls, and social media activity will be used to maximize impact.

Emails acquired by NPR through public records requests showed election officials began to field questions from voters and state lawmakers shortly after these calls went out.

Cleta Mitchell is known by many for working with former President Donald Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election. The lawyer was on the phone when Trump asked election workers in Georgia to make sure the votes are counted.

Her podcast, “Who’s Counting,” has become a central hub for stolen election narratives, and she’s also started a coalition of grassroots groups across the country called the Election Integrity Network.

Documented shared documents with NPR which said that she hosted a secret ERIC summit with red state lawmakers.

When Ardoin said he was pulling the state out of ERIC, the crowd applauded for 15 seconds. The event was publicized less than 24 hours before Ardoin’s office released its statement on ERIC.

Many voting officials who were on the record in the past praising the partnership are now no longer with ERIC. Ohio pulled out a month after LaRose spoke to NPR.

With the states that have pulled out, the secretaries of state are expected to run for higher office next year.

The governor of Florida is running for the Republican presidential nomination in four years. The state’s stance on ERIC was changed almost immediately after a new secretary of state was appointed.

Brad Raffensperger, a Republican Secretary of State from Georgia, said in an interview with NPR that “We’re going to have dirtier voter rolls.”

Election experts say less accurate voter rolls have a direct impact on voters, from longer lines at precincts to mail ballots and information getting sent to the wrong places.

J. Christian Adams, a conservative elections attorney, has long been a critic of how ERIC operates. But he told NPR: “It’s this crazy zeal to get out of ERIC … that is going to cause voter fraud to flourish.”

The Gateway Pundit, NPR and Electronic Registration Information Center: How a far-right website kicked ERIC in January 2022

I’m not sure exactly what the end will be, but I’m sure there are going to be ripples from this particular move. I don’t think it’s an isolated thing.

Hundreds of thousands of posts were analyzed by NPR’s investigations team on several social media sites frequented by election deniers. We realized the far right’s fixation on the program was started by Gateway Pundit’s coverage.

The story starts in January 2022, when a far-right website called the Gateway Pundit, which has pushed conspiracy theories in the past, began writing about ERIC. Up until then the partnership was considered a success story, with member states that were both political and bipartisan.

“The little secret is that maybe more than 10 years ago, if somebody voted in Ohio, in Florida, in Arizona and Texas, you would have never known,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in an interview with NPR in February. ERIC allows us to compare our voter rolls to other states.

The tool is called the Electronic Registration Information Center. It was created 10 years ago as a way to share data between states, so they could keep their voter rolls up to date. It allows election officials better insight into when their voters move and die and the rare times when they vote twice in different states, which is illegal.

Why are Republicans abandoning one of the best tools the government has to catch voter fraud? The question is the focus of a new NPR investigation.