Republican states pull out of voter rolls program amid false claims of bias

Three Republican states announced this week that they would be terminating their membership with a prominent, multi-state consortium that shares voter rolls data to keep their lists up to date. The moves come amid unfounded rightwing conspiracies about the security and partisan leaning of the organization.

Eric has been supported by its member states, including many GOP-controlled states, since it launched in 2012 as a way to supplement the insufficient national voter registration database. It was not until last year, when rightwing conspiracy theories began to spread, that the organization began to be viewed as partisan and states began to question their membership.

Far-right groups and websites, which were already actively spreading election misinformation and sowing doubt in election administration, began describing Eric as left-leaning and falsely tied the organization to liberal billionaire George Soros. The rightwing website Gateway Pundit published a series of baseless blog posts claiming that Eric was a liberal plot to inflate voter rolls and that it could allow private voter data to become public.

Trump has called for more Republican states to withdraw, falsely claiming that Eric is inflating the rolls for Democrats.

Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs with the Election Center, said that Eric had benefited for more than a decade from state and local officials from both sides of the aisle working together to serve the electorate.