The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has sued in several states to gain access to
Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) data reports concerning possible deceased voters on the states’ rolls. ERIC is an interstate compact that shares voter roll data to check for deceased voters. It’s an important program, but it’s mired in secrecy. ERIC’s membership agreement stipulates that the reports cannot be shared with the public. PILF says the secrecy agreement violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, “which gives the public a right to inspect voter rolls and voter list maintenance documents.”
In the most recent action,
the U.S. District Court in Colorado denied a motion by Secretary of State Jena Griswold to dismiss PILF’s suit.
The judge in the case ruled that the lawsuit could continue, stating that “NVRA’s disclosure provision should be construed in favor of broad disclosure.”
PILF President J. Christian Adams, who is also a PJ Media contributor, said, “Colorado’s Secretary of State Jena Griswold should stop fighting transparency and hand over these ERIC reports. Other ERIC member states should take notice that under federal law the public has a right to inspect ERIC reports.”
Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Texas recently left ERIC, citing concerns about partisanship and transparency. They were also unhappy about an ERIC requirement that the states in the compact send voter registration information to all eligible but unregistered adults.
While it’s great that red states like Florida and Ohio are wise to ERIC’s lack of transparency and are diligent about maintaining their voter roles, what about the blue states that don’t
really want to purge their voter rolls? In those states—some of which want to send out a ballot to every man, woman, child, dog, and dead person—it can be much easier to cheat.
In the example above with the Florida voter who cast a ballot for his dead father, there’s literally nothing that can stop him from committing voter fraud in a state that isn’t diligent about removing dead voters from their rolls.