DALLAS — Texas still has no plans to replace one of its best weapons to fight voter fraud.
The Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, is designed to catch repeat voters and keep voter rolls accurate.
ERIC provides officials with reports that identify inaccurate or out-of-date voter registration records, deceased voters, individuals who appear to be eligible to vote but who are not yet registered, and possible cases of illegal voting.
But Texas, along with several other Republican-led states, abandoned the national, data-sharing program following a misinformation campaign.
And there’s no comparable replacement that exists yet.
“I think that our voter rolls have the possibility of being much dirtier than they were at this time last year -- and that comes with security risks,” Jessica Huseman told us on Y’all-itics. “When Republicans talk about dirty voter rolls, mostly they’re exaggerating as to the harms. But there are some.”
Jessica Huseman is the Editorial Director of Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization that reports on elections across the country. Votebeat reporters have covered ERIC, and the Republican pullback, extensively.
Huseman says the reality of the situation is that those states that left ERIC now receive less accurate data, if any data at all, and that means less accurate elections.
And what are some of the potential harms she refers to?
“If you’ve got a bunch of voters not voting in the right precinct, you’re not apportioning your resources correctly as an election administrator. You might be sending people to the wrong polling locations and then their vote won’t count anyway,” she said.
There are other ways this could impact elections in Texas. Listen to the entire episode to learn more. And Huseman discusses Governor Abbott’s recent announcement that the state removed around one million people from its voter rolls. She explains why that’s not a large number and why it’s a common occurrence. And as it turns out, many of those names came from… ERIC. Cheers!