Voting booths at the Glass Elementary School polling station in Eagle Pass, Texas, on November 8, 2022.
Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images
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Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images
Voting booths at the Glass Elementary School polling station in Eagle Pass, Texas, on November 8, 2022.
Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images
Texas is on track to become the latest — and largest — state to leave the bipartisan data-sharing partnership that states across the country use to cross-check their voter lists.
Texas lawmakers on Monday gave final approval to Senate Bill 1070, will seek to end the state’s participation in the Electronic Registry Information Center, or ERIC. The legislation is currently directed at Governor Greg Abbott.
Many GOP-led states have withdrawn from the ERIC in response to conservative advocacy groups, who have sometimes spread misinformation about the treaty. Virginia on May 11 become the eighth state to announce its departure.
Senate Bill 1070, sponsored by Republican Senator Bryan Hughes, would push Texas to use an alternative system for updating voter lists, such as checking to make sure voters are not registered Sign up to vote in multiple states.
Hughes’s Law followed a series of discussions he had with right-wing activists about ERIC, like the first detail by Votebeat news site. In an online meeting in October, Hughes told activists there was no evidence of wrongdoing on behalf of ERIC in Texas. He described his interests at the time as primarily political.
“The people who run ERIC are not the ones that align with our values and so we need an alternative,” he said. “Now, there’s no evidence that the ERIC is doing anything with the Texas voter list. But we do know that the people running the ERIC don’t share our worldview.”
ERIC is run by it bipartisan group of member states. Hughes did not respond to multiple requests for comment on his bill.
Joyce LeBombard, president of the Federation of Women Voters of Texas, said her main concern is that the state won’t immediately have a different system for cross-checking its list of voters.
“There is no other system to replace ERIC at this time,” she said.
IN statement In March, Texas election officials announced a “newly created position” at the state clerk’s office “to develop and administer a program to cross-check voter registration between states. “
But LeBombard says creating a system that works can take a lot of time. She said if there were serious problems with the ERIC, member states should focus on improving the system rather than abandoning it altogether.
“It really deals with conspiracy theories, misinformation and misinformation as well as the ‘Big Lie,'” she said, referring to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. . “It’s really a small group of people who are questioning it even though the system has been in place for over a decade and has worked successfully.”
