Current Agenda - 3.15.23 (Wednesday) at 2 p.m. (ET)
Welcome/Announcements - Kathy Harms
Some great news with states pulling out of ERIC. Lots of work still left to do. EAC is meeting today and ERIC is on their schedule today. Heather Honey has done lots of work to help states that are already or getting ready to sign up with ERIC.
ERIC - Heather Honey | Verity Vote
This is all publicly available info. This is not just opinion but this is history of how ERIC came to be and what the issues are as they exist right now.
Presentation - The best data money can’t buy
Hayden Ludwig wrote and article posted today and other parts to come. https://www.restorationofamerica.com/restoration-news/eric-the-best-data-money-cant-buy-pt-1/
Company’s are enhancing their databases of voter data.
Al Franken case - Using catalist database and ran the name of voters to see which envelopes would contain R or D ballots.
Catalist is building a voter database that leaned democratic. George Soros is one of the owners. Other organizations encouraging “voter registration modernization”: transformative reform to allow money to be used for other things.
In 2010 documents leaked where they are reflecting on their success on their initiatives.
Pew Center on the states - what ERIC will become a couple of years later.
EBU - eligible but unregistered
2011 - PEW gets additional funding to study best practices and uses Catalist as a baseline
Interstate Crosscheck had 28 states sharing voter files. But they were sued out of the system
Official list of EBU’s not available for PEW or Catalist
2012 - ERIC incorporated in Delaware. Initially had 7 member states…NOT contract. This allows every state to bypass the scrutiny a contract would bring. Member agreement created before there were any members. Sole mission to improve voter accuracy.
Stated to “reform of the election system in the United States”
Agreements require all inactive and active voter files, all licensing or ID records contained in the MV database.
Violation of federal driver privacy protection act
To identify properly, you do not need phone number or email or some other email but ERIC requires this info in the member agreement
ERIC says states have to validate the data before anything is removed because of inaccuracy. But for EBU’s the state is required to contact them.
Impact of ERIC reflect those requirements (refer to graph on slide) 10x more added than they could ever cause to be removed
How states perform on list maintenance, non-ERIC states remove 2.9% of moved where ERIC states remove 2.1%, based on EAC data
Member agreements doesn’t require states to request moving data
How is other data agency used, that is fed into ERIC? Jeff Jonas, Senzing. Disclosed relationships i.e. spouse. Using relationship data from other agencies