State might join voter data group
Democrats encourage enrollment in ERIC, a target of Republicans
ALBANY — Democrats seeking to shore up public trust in elections are pushing to enroll New York in a national nonpartisan voter data-sharing organization, even as that group has in recent months become a major political target for Republicans in several other states.
If New York joins the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center, it will represent a significant gain for the group, which was formed by seven Democratic and Republican states in 2012 with the express purpose of helping each maintain “clean” and accurate databases of eligible voters. ERIC also promotes statewide voter registration efforts and provides tools to identify fraudulent voter activity, according to the organization.
As the fourth most populous state in the nation, New York would become one of the most influential states in ERIC and its most populous member. In recent months, several Gop-led states including Texas — the third most populous state in the country — have exited ERIC, with top elections officials there citing nebulous claims that the organization promotes rather than fights voter fraud.
New York’s bipartisan Board of Elections, which can technically opt in to the organization on its own, has so far delayed joining ERIC in the decade since it was formed.
“There hasn’t been bipartisan agreement to join,” said Kristen Zebrowski Stavisky, the board’s Democratic co-executive director: Democrats on the panel are more receptive to the idea, while Republicans have generally balked.
“My personal view is that this would be another resource to help (counties), because we’re a very mobile society,” Stavisky said, adding that she views membership in any voter datasharing organization as a tool to help manage the naturally high number of people who move around within the state and region.
New York will defer to a legislative mandate to join ERIC, Stavisky said. A bill authorizing the Board of Elections to join “multistate voter list maintenance organizations” is currently working its way through the Legislature. State Sen. James Skoufis, an Orange County Democrat who is the measure’s sponsor in his chamber, touted its passage as part of a broader voting rights package earlier this year.
A version of the same bill is before the Assembly’s Election Law Committee.
Stavisky said if the measure be signed into law, the Board of Elections would quickly disseminate guidance to counties.
Once a relatively obscure and largely administrative organization, ERIC became controversial in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, which became riddled with false accusations of election fraud deployed by former President Donald J. Trump and many of his supporters. Many of those players, claiming to act in the name of election integrity, cast ERIC as a supposed tool to increase voter registration among liberals.
Nine states, all led by Republicans, have since announced they will leave the coalition.
In New York, voter fraud is relatively rare, though isolated incidents tend to capture significant media attention. In one recent high-profile case, several Rensselaer County Republican officials have faced federal charges related to absentee ballot fraud; that probe has already produced two guilty pleas.
Every state has a federal mandate to keep their voter rolls — or databases of eligible voters — as accurate as possible, though it’s often a complicated process and one of the core challenges for any state election official. A state’s voter database can change daily as people die, become eligible to vote or move within or out of state.
If states agree to participate in ERIC, they send voter registration and motor vehicle department data to the organization at least once every 60 days. ERIC then uses those two data sets, as well as official death records from the Social Security Administration and change-of-address data from the U.S. Postal Service, to report back to election officials seeking to have the most up-todate voter roll information available.
Elections officials receive periodic updates to help them identify inaccurate or out-of-date voter registration records, as well as possible cases of illegal voting, according to the organization. ERIC also provides states with lists of eligible but unregistered individuals so they can encourage residents to register to vote.
Each state’s dues are calculated by the size of its voting-age population. California — the most populous state in the U.S. — is not currently a member of ERIC, though Democratic state lawmakers there are pursuing a legislative path similar to the one sought in New York.