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Cris Dush: ERIC is partisan, expensive and ineffective. Pennsylvania should leave it.

Amanda Berg/For Spotlight PA

Cris Dush: ERIC is partisan, expensive and ineffective. Pennsylvania should leave it.

Last month, Texas joined at least eight other states in breaking ties with the Electronic Registration and Information Center (ERIC), an experimental group claiming to help improve state voter registries. Neighboring states like New York haven’t joined, while Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia have withdrawn. Pennsylvania should consider doing the same.

ERIC has two stated aims: identify ineligible voters (such as deceased and duplicate voters) for removal from voter rolls, and encourage voter registration by requiring states to mail postcards to eligible but unregistered (EBU) voters. There are several serious concerns with Pennsylvania's membership in ERIC.

Bias and Redundancy

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First, ERIC is a private corporation founded by a partisan Democrat activist, who until recently still enjoyed a controlling voice on its board. By joining ERIC, the Department of State has assumed several binding legal obligations that, in my opinion, exceed their legal authority.

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Secondly, ERIC’s voter registration push seems to align with a broader Democrat recruitment strategy, which (given ERIC’s refusal to make them optional, and their own claim to have identified about 30 million more EBU voters than voter roll corrections) seems to be their real focus.

While voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts are fine goals for campaigns or political parties, it remains unclear why we should add state power and authority to them. The Department of State has enough work performing administrative and electoral functions without extending itself into finding potential voters to register.

Pennsylvania law already mandates voter registration efforts with drivers licenses through PennDOT, reaching over 9.1 million drivers as of 2021. It also requires all 93 public assistance offices, county clerks for orphans’ court in all 67 counties, marriage license bureaus, state disability offices, and military recruitment centers to offer voter registration, and help complete, receive and transmit applications.

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This, together with prior outreach and various third-party efforts, renders ERIC’s costly compulsory voter drives duplicative and unnecessary. It isn’t the government’s job to continue badgering EBU voters (who have repeatedly declined the many opportunities to register) onto the rolls.

And even if it was, and even if current laws aren’t enough, we can simply enhance existing efforts through different government touchpoints like licensure and permitting. A simple checkbox on a government website or tax statement offering information on voter registration would be a cheaper, cleaner, less intrusive way to achieve the same objective.

It costs too much

Speaking of costs, a third concern is the half-million dollars Pennsylvania has spent on membership dues since joining ERIC in 2016. Dues are apportioned based on the number of participating states. Fewer members mean higher costs and lower benefits.

These costs don’t include nearly $2 million already spent on EBU voter drives, including $856,000 to contact 2.3 million unregistered voters in 2016, and $830,000 for 2.1 million postcards in 2020 — a “refresh” which exceeded ERIC’s requirements.

To be fair, these costs were covered by grants from outside groups like the highly partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). (ERIC obtained the grants independently, and then invited the Department of State to apply for them.) But thanks to recent legislation blocking dark money influence on elections, these grants are no longer available, placing the burden of future costs on taxpayers.

Private Data to Third Parties

One of the chief concerns about ERIC is the privacy, security, and transparency of Pennsylvanians’ data. ERIC requires Pennsylvania to provide troves of sensitive data on its residents—including names, addresses, birth dates, driver’s license numbers, citizenship status, phone numbers, and last four Social Security digits.

ERIC routinely shares this privileged data with third-party groups like CEIR. In 2020, Pennsylvania directly trafficked this private data to CEIR, an invasion of the privacy of more than a million Pennsylvanians. What did these groups do with this data? We don’t know, because ERIC forbids states from sharing the results of its outreach — even with legislators — without a court order! This appalling lack of transparency and breach of trust prevents Pennsylvanians from knowing what benefit they’re getting, if any, at the expense of their privacy.

Receiving this data unfairly positions CEIR and groups like them to conduct their own partisan voter drives. Maybe that’s why CEIR received millions from Mark Zuckerberg, in addition to a $36 million campaign to in benefit Democrat turnout in Pennsylvania in 2020. (CEIR, which shares the same liberal cofounder as ERIC, also directly lobbies states to join ERIC.)

Finally, it remains unclear whether ERIC is even effective. Though it mandates voter drives, it doesn’t mandate states to remove ineligible voters. It’s taken lawsuits to force Pennsylvania counties to clean their rolls, partly because laws on registry maintenance are so narrow, a problem I am working to fix. ERIC specifically refuses to handle voter information concerning noncitizens.

ERIC has been criticized even by Democrats for wrongly cancelling voter registrations. By some estimates, non-ERIC states actually do better with voter rolls. And other states are actively developing cleaner and more collaborative alternatives to ERIC.

If ERIC truly helps with voter roll integrity, that’s probably a good thing. It’s not obvious to me that it does, but in any event, we must take immediate action to address problems like the sharing of privileged data of Pennsylvanians with third parties like CEIR.

Pennsylvania shouldn’t be forced into mandatory state-sponsored voter drives involving the concentration of private data in the hands of costly and unaccountable corporations, founded and financed by partisan outsiders.

Cris Dush, a Republican who represents the 25th District in the Pennsylvania senate, is chairman of the Senate’s state government committee.

First Published: September 5, 2023, 9:30 a.m.

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