Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a measure on March 9 that would restore the state’s partnership with an interstate compact whose stated mission is to help clean voter rolls, saying the service costs too much money.
At its height, ERIC had 32 states and the District of Columbia as members. However, last year saw a swath of withdrawal by nine Republican-led states citing concerns about political bias and a lack of transparency, as well as how the organization uses and shares its data.
Among the nine states was Virginia, one of seven founding members of ERIC when it was launched in 2012. In a letter to ERIC, Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals said her state will no longer participate in the project because of the “controversy surrounding the historical sharing of data with outside organizations leveraged for political purposes.”
Another reason Ms. Beals cited for pulling out of ERIC is the “increasing and uncertain costs” associated with the eight other states that removed themselves from the project, namely Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Texas, and West Virginia.
The Democrats, who secured majorities in both chambers of the Virginia Legislature after the November 2023 general elections, mounted an effort to restore Virginia’s place in ERIC. With strictly party-line votes, they were able to advance Senate Bill 606, a one-paragraph piece of legislation, to Mr. Youngkin’s desk.
The bill was vetoed on the day before the state Legislature concluded its 2024 regular session.
“The financial burden of rejoining ERIC includes membership fees, which have increased more than 115 percent since 2022, and participation expenses,” the Republican governor said in his veto message.
Mr. Youngkin also opposed ERIC’s requirement that member states send voter registration information to all eligible but unregistered adults, a mandate that he found not only expansive to implement but also redundant.
“ERIC’s mandatory Eligible but Unregistered mailing will cost the Commonwealth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is superfluous considering Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles’ automatic registration policies and same-day registration for voting,” he said.
Since leaving ERIC, Virginia has struck deals with many states to share voter data. According to Mr. Youngkin, those one-to-one agreements have been “incurring no additional costs.”
“The Department of Elections has increased its data sources by collaborating with forty-one states to obtain driver’s license surrender data, while ERIC only provides data sharing with twenty-five states,” the governor said.
Mr. Youngkin’s reasoning to stay out of ERIC has been echoed by other state officials. Many of them took issue with ERIC’s requirement that member states solicit unregistered residents to register to vote, since those individuals were likely offered voter registration at the DMV but decided not to sign up.
Also among the ERIC’s critics was former President Donald Trump, who claimed that its operations are biased in favor of the Democrats’ interests.
