BREAKING: Ohio is the Sixth State to Leave ERIC. Who’s Next?

Disaster at the Left’s biggest voter data machine.

It was a tough week for the Left’s top data collector, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), and then it got worse.

Mere hours after ERIC’s board meeting on March 17, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced he was withdrawing his state from the organization, the sixth state to do so. Ohio follows hot on the heels of Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia, which announced their own withdrawals from ERIC on March 6.

“This decision does not come without careful thought and extensive conversations with my counterparts in the organization,” LaRose wrote. “The action Ohio is taking today follows nearly a year of good faith, bipartisan efforts to reform ERIC’s oversight and services. Unfortunately, these attempts to save what could be an unparalleled election integrity service have fallen short.”

He continued:

ERIC has chosen repeatedly to ignore demands to embrace reforms that bolster confidence in its performance [and] encourage growth in its membership . . . .

Rather, you have chosen to double-down on poor strategic decisions, which have only resulted in the transformation of a previously bipartisan organization to one that appears to favor only the interests of one political party.

. . . I cannot justify the use of Ohio’s tax dollars for an organization that seems intent on rejecting meaningful accountability, publicly maligning my motives, and waging a relentless campaign of misinformation about this effort. The conduct of ERIC and some of its hyper-partisan allies in recent weeks only heightens my suspicion and reinforces my decision [emphasis added].

“Additionally, I cannot accept the board’s refusal – for a third time –to adopt basic reforms to the use of ERIC’s data-sharing services,” referring to the group’s transmission of private data to ERIC founder David Becker’s activist group, the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). “This should be a non-controversial policy, yet you have chosen to make it a hyperbolic, partisan fight that has fractured” ERIC, LaRose added.

Years of Deceit and Neglect

In 2022, a bipartisan group of ERIC member states (including Ohio) met to propose reforms to the compact, which was founded ostensibly to clean state voter rolls by Becker, a left-wing operative and elections lawyer. Among these proposals were dropping ERIC’s voter registration requirement, booting Becker from the board, protecting sensitive voter information from being funneled to partisan third parties, and cracking down on voter fraud and double-voting.

While the members’ discussion in the March 17 meeting remain undisclosed to the public, LaRose had previously expressed frustration over “an ex-officio board member’s aggressive lobbying campaign” to stifle “unanimous recommendations” put forward by these states, almost certainly referring to Becker.

“I will not accept the status quo as an outcome of the next meeting,” LaRose warned in a March 6 letter, adding that “anything short of the reforms [previously proposed] will result in . . . our withdrawal from membership.”

And he meant it.

Ohio joins five states which have departed the foundering compact, beginning with Louisiana and Alabama last year. We congratulate Secretary LaRose for his courageous, principled representation of Ohio’s voters, and hope that his leadership will inspire other states to withdraw from Becker’s venomous organization.

Don’t miss our report, “ERIC: The Best Data Money Can’t Buy“

For more on David Becker, see “Bye, Bye Becker“