The greatest trick that the left pulled was convincing conservatives that there was anything nonpartisan about holding elections.
The Electronic Registration Information Center, better known as “ERIC”, is one of the most important and under-recognized groups in the fight for election integrity. It is a private 501(3) organization that has access to sensitive information about tens of thousands of voters across 30 US states and the District of Columbia.
ERIC matches death information published on the Social Security Administration to an individual voter’s full name and address. It also provides partial Social Security numbers provided by state departments (DMVs), and driver’s license numbers to create a picture of where a voter has resided and registered to vote.
Although it is not known how many people are included in ERIC’s system exactly, the 30 states together make up nearly 204,000,000 people–61 percent of the total country’s population.
This information is crucial to ERIC’s main purpose, which is to help member states audit their voter rolls and clean them up. ERIC does this by identifying when voters die or move. This information is essential for improving election integrity.
ERIC does not advertise its role as one of the best tools for mass voter registration in the country. ERIC states must target eligible but unregistered voters in order to keep their taxpayer-funded membership. These campaigns can sometimes be funded by the left-wing Pew Charitable Trusts which is a huge donor to leftist groups that incubated ERIC.
This is not an image that the group wants to promote. For instance, its most recent IRS disclosure for 2020 reports that ERIC works in partnership with member states to “educate eligible voters on how to register to a voter.” (The IRS allows non-profit 501(c),(3) organizations to participate in nonpartisan voter education. An ERIC-friendly question-and-answer document published by the Advancement Project is an anti-voter ID advocacy organization.
ERIC states are also required to contact eligible but unregistered persons and “educate” them on how to register to vote. ERIC states must contact at least 95 per cent of eligible or potential eligible voters [emphasis in original]. Automatic removal [original emphasis] of the state’s ERIC membership is possible if it fails to comply.
It is unclear what “potentially eligible” means, as opposed to “eligible” to vote. The document asks “Does the ERIC program result in the reduction or unlawful double voting?”. The answer is “ERIC’s purpose does not reduce the number of double voters.”
It’s possible that the sentence was poorly written and implies that ERIC doubles voting, when in fact it meant that double voting reduction is not ERIC’s primary purpose. Isn’t it equally important to report those who have moved or died as well as to catch voters who vote twice? Americans shouldn’t be alarmed that private organizations are ordering state governments to increase their voter base.
ERIC membership is very affordable on paper. Annual dues range between $16,000 and $74,000. However, ERIC-mandated registration drives can be much more costly. Virginia’s Department of Elections has estimated that ERIC membership and its “associated mail costs,” which is a euphemism for mandatory registration drives, are $300,000.0 per year. Only $39,000 of this accounts for dues.
Pew Charitable Trusts offered grants to assist states that could not afford expensive campaigns. This was provided they joined ERIC by the deadline. Pew reported that these grants were available in 2014, 2015, and 2016. They also continued to subside ERIC as late as 2019.
Pew requested information about: Total voting eligibility; Population transfers with ERIC states; “Commitment for partnering in research regarding the most efficient contact and outreach strategies” and “Percentage state is willing to pay” in exchange for the money. The obvious question that lawmakers should ask is: Is this a suitable project for a tax-exempt, private foundation?
ERIC’s Origins & David Becker
The deeper you dig, the more red flags you see. ERIC was initiated as a Pew Charitable Trusts project, as one liberal group notes. The group’s connections to billionaire George Soros and David Becker, a partisan operative are less well-known.
Becker, a former Justice Department trial lawyer, earned a reputation for being a ” hardcore Leftist” who “couldn’t stand conservatives,” according to the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division. Becker was a lobbyist specializing in elections in 2005. However, the group is not listed on his LinkedIn profile. PFAW supports the usual far-left “reforms” in elections, including the Democrats’ For the People Act(H.R. 1).
As director of election initiatives, Becker was primarily focused on the implementation of new voter register “reforms” within the states when he joined the Pew Center on the States. He also dismisses the possibility that voter fraud could arise from mass registration. ERIC was created four years later under his leadership.
The project funding appears to have come from Soros’s foundation to promote an open society. In 2011, Soros funneled two grants totaling $725,000 to Pew. The first grant was to support the Pew Center on the States’ voter registration modernization project, while the second funding “renewed project support for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Elections Initiatives to modernize voters registration systems and provide new support to election initiatives to expand the scope of the voter information project”
Independent journalists also discovered references in a leaked copy from the Open Society Foundations’ 2011-12 budget. This document lists Pew Center on the States alongside the Brennan Center as a “lead grantee”. These organizations oppose voter ID laws and support the Left’s array of electoral “reforms”, including Election Day registration.
In his 2013 testimony, Becker, then representing Pew, used the commendation for another Soros-funded group the Center for Democracy and Technology, (CDT) to urge New Mexico to become an ERIC member. CDT is also funded by the Ford, and MacArthur Foundations in order to promote net neutrality and similar regulations.
An archived copy from ERIC’s website in late 2019 shows Joseph Lorenzo Hall (a Center for Democracy and Technology senior staffer) who has since been removed from the site. Stephen Trout, an ERIC board member, is a former Oregon elections director. He now heads government partnerships for CDT’s Voting Works. This advises states about voter verification and voting by mail.
Becker was the ERIC leader until 2016. He left ERIC to create a new reform group, the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). However, he is still on ERIC’s board. CEIR claims it is nonpartisan but the reality is that it is. In his testimony before Congress in October 2021, Becker represented CEIR. He described election integrity concerns to be “a scam to keep [Republican voters] angry, divided and donating” that benefits Russia and other hostile countries trying “to delegitimize democracy.”
They are being fed lies daily that claim that millions of citizens, half of which are members of their party, conspired to win the election for the current president. And that all of these millions of conspirators are lying. This illness is leading to new laws in states that make elections less secure. It also threatens public servants who are running elections.
Mark Zuckerberg donated nearly $70 million to CEIR in 2020 to finance Covid-19 “relief grant” funds. This money was paid to secretaries of states in key battlegrounds to pay out ” urgent voter educational assistance“.
The true purpose of CEIR was to promote mail-in voting, early voting, and government-run registration campaigns before the 2020 election. The state spent $2 million to register and elect likely Democratic voters in Maryland and the surrounding counties.
Michigan’s $12 million CEIR grant to an inactive nonprofit in Michigan ended up with 99 percent. Two Democratic consulting companies took the money and used it to fund “nonpartisan voter education” through targeted text messages and ads encouraging Michiganders to vote. These firms could have targeted Democratic voters. We have also found six-figure grants to CEIR by Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund. This fund heavily funds vote-by-mail advocacy groups using the pass-through nonprofits within Arabella Advisors’ “dark money” empire.
Heather Honey, the founder of the watchdog group Verity vote discovered that ERIC has a data-sharing agreement with CEIR. CEIR is alleged to use this agreement to create lists of eligible voters to target. Honey claims that ERIC’s membership agreement “prevents member countries from disclosing any information related to ERIC” or other voter registration activities. This would be in violation of the National Voter Registration Act (93), which requires states to make such activities transparent.
The CEIR’s Zuck Bucks strategy was similar to that of another Zuckerberg accomplice in 2020: the Centre for Tech and Civic Life, another “good governance” group. This group dumped approximately $350 million in thousands of local election offices in a thinly disguised effort to privatize elections in these key jurisdictions. The Zuck bucks of CTCL favored Democratic vote-rich cities in battleground states and greatly boosted Biden’s turnout
Wisconsin was the first target of Zuck bucks. 84 percent of $10.1 million CTCL payments went to the state’s five largest cities. All of these cities broke for Biden. CTCL grants per capita in Biden counties were $3.75 and $0.55 respectively in Trump counties. These five cities used CTCL grants in Wisconsin to fund the so-called Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan. This plan revolved around drop boxes and mail-in ballots, processing equipment, and last-minute modifications to early voting laws. The scheme wouldn’t have been possible without Zuck bucks, as it is almost certain.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court declared drop boxes illegal on July 20, 2022. Since then, 24 states have prohibited or restricted Zuckbucks from future elections. These measures have been vetoed by six Democratic governors. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D.), vetoed them two times. Conservatives should be concerned that ERIC representatives appeared in at least one CTCL presentation on “maintaining voters lists” to discuss their organization’s “plans for expanding the ‘eligible and unregistered report’.” Also, report that they engaged in “limited direct lobbying to encourage state officials. . . ERIC membership
What does ERIC look like for partisan get-out-the-vote groups such as CTCL and CEIR?
Louisiana is very concerned. After it became apparent that ERIC is more than just purging voter rolls, Kyle Ardoin, Secretary of State, announced in January that the Bayou State would immediately suspend its participation. Louisiana joined the compact in 2014. It was the first state to do so, and it is the only one to withdraw.
My predecessor in Louisiana joined ERIC believing that it would improve the accuracy of the voter rolls and increase the integrity of the elections. After reviewing these allegations and consulting with experts and election lawyers, I believe it is not in the best interest of Louisiana to join this organization. It is essential that all allegations of voter fraud or misuse of voters’ personal data are investigated. My job is to protect the data that voters have entrusted to me. These allegations are very concerning and I am looking forward to ERIC’s prompt response.
Activists Take On
ERIC is a beloved left-leaning group that is nonpartisan and apolitical.
For example, in Massachusetts, many leftist groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood, Common Cause, and the local SEIU –, asked the state to join ERIC last ye as part of legislation that would also apply the left’s most popular election “reforms”, such as automatic and same-day voter registries, restoration of felon voting rights and permanent vote via mail. Massachusetts joined The Compact in June.
One has to wonder why ERIC membership would be relevant for this complete transformation of the commonwealth’s elections.
ERIC membership is also listed in the League of Women Voters’ “reforms”, which similarly include automatic voter Registration. Mainers for Modern Elections, a League of Women Voters project, wants ERIC membership. It is also listed in its reforms, which further list drop boxes for mail ballots, ballot curing, and expanded early voting. Its coalition–which is entirely untainted by conservatives–includes Arabella’s Center for Secure and Modern Elections, Common Cause, and Planned Parenthood represents the U.S.
The LGBT-focused Movement Advancement Project does not include ERIC membership. This is a rating system that measures how democratic a state is. Alabama was ranked ” low” in 2021 due to its inability to vote by mail, insufficient participation among non-white voters, and for failing to join the anti-electoral college group National Popular Vote.
The far-left Center for Popular Democracy, famous for harassing Republican politicians, considers ERIC membership key to universal voter registration–alongside automatic and same-day registration, pre-registration of 16-year-olds, and the abolition of voter ID laws.
The board is made up mainly of state election directors, some with concerns about ties to the left.
John Lindback, the executive director of ERIC between 2014 and 2017, was a former Oregon elections director as well as former chief of staff to the Alaska Lt. Governor. Fran Ulmer (D). Fran Ulmer (D). According to an ongoing investigation, by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, the center helped CTCL target local election offices for Zuck dollars in exchange for information about their budgets, voter register lists, and other forms.
Edgardo Cordo Cortes was then Virginia’s commissioner for elections. Terry McAuliffe (D), was the chairman of ERIC’s board. He now serves as an advisor to the left-wing Brennan Center election security team, which supports the massive expansion of vote-by-mail. He testified in June before Congress about the “growing threat [of] information” from conservatives backing “Big Lie,” citing “activists” aligned to MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, and “anti-voter laws” passed by “many” states (read: Republican).
Peggy Reeves was the election director for Connecticut in 2009. She is a Democrat and served as a member of Connecticut’s state legislature from 2009 through 2011. Wayne Thorley serves as secretary of state for Nevada. He was responsible for overseeing the state’s 2020 transition to an all-mail election, as per legislation passed by the Democratic legislature.
Who Registers? Why?
ERIC’s activities raise serious questions about who, or what should be registering voters. This is especially true since both the Democratic Party and the left have opted for government-run voter registration drives.
Last March, President Biden directed federal agencies to distribute voter registration forms and vote-by-mail applications “in the normal course of services” and provide “voting access to and education” for individuals in federal prisons. It’s the culmination of a yearslong pressure campaign by professional activists led by Demos, the think tank of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and the socialist left, which wants to abolish the Electoral College and grant statehood to Washington, D.C. Make no mistake–taxpayer-funded voter registration is a sea change in the way Americans run elections. It means that seniors can receive a voter registration form or a mail-in application for their Social Security benefits. Native Americans may seek treatment at Indian Health Services. Students can apply for federal college loans.
Few conservatives know the left’s obsession with the power and importance of voter registration. Over the past decade, I have calculated that Ford and other liberal foundations, as well as pass-throughs such as Tides, have invested $461 million in registration nonprofits, mainly through 501(c), and (3) nonprofits.
Why? Leftists believe that a larger turnout will result in Democratic victories. Groups like America Voices and State Voices and Stacey Abrams’s Fair Fight Action excel in microtargeting Democratic voters to get them to the polls. However, this only works legally if they are registered. There are enormous tax benefits to using c(3)s to register voters, rather than party committees as it has been done historically. One secret memo from the Democratic turnout group Mind The Gap states:
Nonpartisan voter registration that targets underrepresented groups is the most effective tactic for a Presidential Year. If such efforts are properly planned and executed, they are pre-tax 2-5 times more cost-effective in netting additional Democratic voters than the tactics campaigns will invest (mainly, digital media and broadcast media).
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Be careful: Left-wing funders have never funded groups that are not in line with their larger get-out-the-vote agenda. The foundation’s ultimate goal is the same, regardless of whether it’s a partisan group that gets out the vote or a nonprofit that promotes good government. Even with all this wealth, smart activists know that they cannot rely on foundation funds forever. ERIC, a group that represents the transition from government-funded to private registration campaigns, is the next stage of the left’s election plans.
Even though government registration is imperfect, there are still potential voters who may be overlooked and those who decline to register. Automatic registration is the ultimate solution. The ultimate solution is to automatically register em>everyone/em>. 1). Automatic voter registration is supported by every election reform group.
It is not the question of what conservatives will do about it. Start by looking at ERIC. They might not like what they see.
