Chart by analyst Tim Vetter of the Election Integrity Force and Fund
For months, grassroots groups have sounded the alarm that the Election Registration Information Center is bloating the voter rolls. Now, evidence indicates ERIC is politically compromised. Meanwhile, the clock ticks down to the 2022 election, even as the number of Michigan's registered voters climbs dangerously—and impossibly—to 104% of its Voting Aged Population (VAP).
New evidence: Politically compromised ERIC bloats Michigan’s voter rolls to crisis levels
Friend,
On Monday, Aug. 15, MI Rep. Ann Bollin (R), Chair of House Elections & Ethics Committee, announced, “We have initiated a deeper dive on our end with our legal counsel as we prep for an oversight hearing or letter of inquiry.”
Representative Ann Bollin’s remark came in response to Michigan Fair Elections’ urgent warning that Verity Vote had exposed political compromise in the Electronic Registration Information Center—the organization charged with cleaning the state’s voter rolls. Bollin’s announcement followed months of citizen research and a steady rain of alarming evidence surrounding ERIC, and it signaled the ship of state may be turning. Meanwhile, the countdown clock ticks toward November’s mid-term elections, and ERIC continues to insert bias and bloat into the state’s qualified voter files. Legislative leaders are left with scant but clear options to avert a looming election integrity crisis.
ERIC makes no bones about obstructing transparency. It registers noncitizens and has illegal access to Michigan residents’ personal information. The 4-employee nonprofit fails to remove moved, ineligible, and dead voters. Then, on June 17, Verityvote.us, led by citizen, Heather Honey, an investigator by trade, unveiling public source documents showing the left-wing organization had, at last, crossed a red line.
Honey wrote, “The primary effect of ERIC is to grow the voter rolls by converting eligible-but-unregistered (EBU) persons into registered voters. States divulge to ERIC personally identifying information of unregistered residents, including people who have declined to register for privacy reasons. FOIAs reveal that ERIC is sharing EBU records with Zuckerberg-funded CEIR.”
Come to find out, Michigan’s secretary of state is sending state residents’ legally protected information to ERIC. Then ERIC, a Delaware nonprofit corporation that last filed an annual report in 2017, transfers that data to the Center for Election Innovation Research. CEIR then massages the data to identify who, exactly, clerk should contact to register as voters.
No matter that CEIR and ERIC were both founded and are actively led by one leftist David Becker.
Coincidentally, ERIC has close ties to Senzing, an artificial intelligence software company whose application programming interface is “the fastest way to add highly accurate data matching and relationship analysis to applications and services.”
Michigan has plenty of company in the dark, tangled web that is ERIC. After New Jersey joined on Aug. 9, 32—a full 64%—of the nation’s 50 states feed their data into ERIC and CEIR’s insatiable maws.
Imagine, if you will, what two leftist nonprofits and an artificial software company, cloaked from federal laws that mandate transparency, might do with the tasty personal records of two-thirds of this country’s voting aged residents.
Call to action: Each of us needs to alert our legislators to the ERIC creep. Please modify this letter and send it today:
Dear Honorable [INSERT NAME]: Evidence suggests that Michigan’s voter-roll management system, the Electronic Registration Information Center is politically compromised. ERIC is exploiting those ties in a biased way, and it is bloating our voter rolls to crisis levels.
I urge you to take immediate action to remedy this critical election integrity issue.
FOIA documentation. Verity Vote, with citizen investigator Heather Honey at its helm, has confirmed via FOIA that ERIC is illegally sharing state residents’ legally protected information with the Center for Election Innovation Research, CEIR. The leftist, David Becker group then massages the data and transfers biased mailing lists of eligible-but-unregistered (EBU) persons back to the states for voter registration outreach.
On June 17, 2022, Verity Vote published ERIC Sharing Data with Zuckerburg-Funded NGO, stating:
The primary effect of ERIC is to grow the voter rolls by converting eligible-but-unregistered (EBU) persons into registered voters. States divulge to ERIC personally identifying information of unregistered residents, including people who have declined to register for privacy reasons. FOIAs reveal that ERIC is sharing EBU records with Zuckerberg-funded CEIR.
ERIC prohibits states from disclosing any data they send to or receive from the four-employee, Delaware-based nonprofit, and ERIC, as a third-party provider, doesn’t have to comply with FOIA requests.
According to the Verity Vote report, public records show, “operatives are working overtime under the cover of ERIC to accomplish their partisan goals.”
CEIR, “was one of two leftist groups used to funnel Mark Zuckerberg’s $419 million that funded the private takeover of government election offices in 2020. This funding targeted the blue areas of swing states, allowing left-wing operatives to run Democrat ‘get out the vote’ operations from inside the election apparatus.”
“Even more troubling is that some of the information shared,” wrote Heather Honey, Verity Vote president, “including the email addresses and cell phone numbers of voters—is now being used for a “disinformation” voter contact drive….
In March, Louisiana announced its withdrawal from ERIC due to “questionable funding sources and that possibly partisan actors may have access to ERIC network data for political purposes.”
Michigan must follow Lousiana’s lead and exit ERIC once. Then we must conduct an immediate and complete forensic audit of our voter rolls.
CEIR injects bias. Then, ERIC bloats the voter rolls.
Per ERIC’s own statistics, in 2020 it identified 17 million new voters compared to identifying only about 3 million inaccurate voters on the rolls.
As of Aug. 11, 2022, Michigan’s 8,149,948 registered voters topped 104% of its voting-age population (VAP) of 7,839,742. (2020 Federal Register). Michigan’s registered voters first exceeded its VAP in 2020, a year after Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson joined Michigan in ERIC.
I urge you to read Victoria Marshall’s Democrat Operatives Control Voter Rolls in 31 States, The Federalist, Aug. 11, 2022.
In case you hear the unfounded argument that ERIC is the state’s only option to fulfill federal requirements for multistate cleaning of the voter rolls, please consider myriad options suggested in the Pure Integrity Michigan Elections Summary:
Alternatives to ERIC: Free and state-run Crosscheck, an alternative interstate system, worked well until sued to extinction, so Michigan should:
1) Acquire Senzing and signature verification software.
2) Remove non-citizens via SAVE, a DHS electronic Immigration status verification service 3) Compile & issue MI reports to maintain voter rolls.
4) Conduct annual voter-roll forensic audit.
5) License NCOA (U.S. Postal Service National Change of Address) database as required by Fed. Law. Use NCOALink to remove Interstate and intrastate double registrants.
6) Publicly post state plan for voter roll maintenance and lists.
7) Acquire NTIS and LADMF (National Technical Information Service and Limited Access Death Master File), used by Ancestry.com and ERIC to secure best info on deaths. Legislate to share death data statewide, not just countywide.
8) Consider Fractal Voter Registry. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/voter-registration-anomalies-exposed-fractal-voter-registry-fpeis-live/
9) Pass Congressional HR 2115 to require states issuing new driver’s licenses to have new residents surrender their old licenses. Destination states to notify exited state.
10) Educate residents who relocate to notify their local clerks of their move.
Thank you for your attention to these matters. I look forward to hearing from you regarding your efforts to restore integrity to Michigan’s elections.
Respectfully,
[Insert your name,
address and phone number here]