Virginia Secedes from National Elections Organization

A February 25 article in Bacon’s Rebellion, “Forget Waldo, Where’s ERIC?” by James Wyatt Whitehouse raised questions about the volunteer national election clearing house organization entitled Electronic Information Registration Center, or ERIC. The BR piece highlighted the experience of the Alabama Secretary of State:

On February 15, 2023, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen paid a visit to the ERIC headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is important to note that Mr. Allen withdrew Alabama from participation in ERIC just a few weeks before his visit. Mr. Allen had this to say about his visit to the Connecticut Avenue headquarters of ERIC, Inc.: ‘I was in DC for a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of States and, since I was in town, I went to see the ERIC Headquarters. What I found was that there was no ERIC headquarters at that address. There were no employees. There were no servers. There was no ERIC presence of any kind. Instead, I found a virtual office that is rentable by the day. What it was missing was people, servers, and any sign of the ERIC team.’

The absence of existential staff and the existence of a virtual office prompted subsequent questions concerning ERIC’s information security and its utility to member states. As noted, Mr. Allen pulled the trigger on his state’s membership weeks before asking his questions. In 2012, Virginia was a founding member of ERIC under the administration of Governor Bob McDonnell.

Election integrity, a questionable and conspiracy-prone equitable outcome of the Big Steal fever arising from the 2020 Presidential election, was an often-cited policy objective of then-candidate Glenn Younkin in the 2021 campaign. For some, election integrity (e.g., in Florida and Texas) means increased criminal prosecution for violations over measures to increase or ease voter registration and ballot access. A primary function of ERIC was to assist member states in clearing voting rolls of the dearly departed who were cited as evidence of voter fraud largely because their names remained active on state databases.

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