About ERIC and why Alabama pulled out of the voter information center
Alabama's newly sworn in Secretary of State Wes Allen is keep a campaign promise.
He said withdrawing Alabama from the Electronic Reference Information Center database also known as ERIC is all about transparency.
During an interview with me on Wednesday, he said, "we are transmitting the data every 60 days from our driver's license system from the State of Alabama, we don't have access to that data."
Allen said he has no evidence showing Alabaman's information is being compromised through ERIC.
ERIC collects DMV data to identify people "potentially eligible" to register allowing the state to increase voter registration.
Allen said now verifying voter rolls will be done in house by working directly with probate judges and other county officials running elections along with other state and county leaders.
"We're gonna work with the national change of address with the United States Postal Service. We're gonna work closely with other state agencies and how they interface with our office, Social Security Administration, Department of Public Health on death records."
ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin declined an interview request but provided the following statement.
ERIC will follow our Bylaws and Membership Agreement regarding any member's request to resign membership. We will continue our work on behalf of our 32 member states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.
The information below was collected from ERICs website and from their Frequently Asked Questions page.
Thirty-two states, including Georgia and Florida, participate in the electronic registration information center also known as ERIC.
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It's a public non-profit that's operated and funded by election agencies from those 32 states and located in Washington DC
Every 60 days, those states submit voter registration data and licensing and identification data from motor vehicle departments to ERIC.
ERIC builds reports and cross references that data with data from other participating states.
They said this is to keep voter rolls up to date as people move and have life changing events including death.
Their website states their data is secure and said some reports can be shared with outside parties.
ERIC has been up and running for 11 years.
Last year ERIC identified more than 200,000 in-state duplicate voters and more than 65,000 voters that were deceased.
