Adams eyeing exit from bipartisan voter data partnership hit by conspiracy theories

Michael Adams likes the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC).

But many other GOP-aligned states don’t, often on a conspiratorial or shaky factual basis. That’s leading Adams to seek options for leaving the bipartisan group that experts say is a vital resource for states to exchange voter data and combat voter fraud.

The organization helps agencies across the country remove dead voters from their rolls, correct addresses, and to reach out to eligible voters that aren’t registered, among other things.

Several Republican states across the country have pulled out of ERIC following false reports from a far-right conspiracy website and the urging of former Republican president Donald Trump. Some conservatives claim the organization is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats, has strong ties to Democratic billionaire donor George Soros, and Trump himself claimed that the organization “pumps the rolls” for Democrats – none of these claims are true.

Adams himself pushed back against these assertions, repeated by his opponents in a primary race this year that he won by more than 37 percentage points. However, with eight GOP-led states having already pulled out of the program, a motion Adams’ office filed in federal court last week indicates that Kentucky could be next.

“While Secretary Adams has previously defended the ERIC organization from misinformation and conspiracy theories, political developments outside our state and outside his control draw into question the continued usefulness of ERIC to Kentucky,” an attorney with Adams’ office wrote.

The motion indicates that ERIC could become more expensive and less useful as GOP states – many of them neighboring states or states where Kentuckians often move to or from – pull out. Florida, Ohio and Virginia are three populous states that Kentuckians often move to or from that are among the eight recent GOP-led states to leave ERIC.

Depending on whether or not Texas leaves – it’s receiving a lot of right-wing pressure to do so – the membership fees could jump from around $40,000 to $65,000, Adams’ office stated.

The statements came in the form of a motion to clarify a 2018 consent judgment handed down by Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove of the Eastern District of Kentucky in the midst of scandal surrounding the practices of former Democratic secretary of state Allison Lundergan Grimes. In that order, Van Tatenhove prescribed that the office should use “reliable evidence of address changes from (ERIC).”

Adams’ office requested to clarify whether or not the actual use of ERIC is required by the consent judgment, or if the office could obtain similar information that ERIC provides via other means.

Prior to the promulgation of such conspiracies, 31 states and Washington D.C. were members of ERIC. In states like Alabama, top election officials were defending ERIC against “patently false” claims mere months before the state pulled out.

“In Alabama, ERIC is used to preserve a clean and accurate voter list and to contact eligible residents who are not registered voters. Each month, we provide ERIC with a voters list and driver’s license data, and we receive information from ERIC for voter list maintenance in return. Monthly, our office receives a list of voter records that potentially need to be removed or inactivated based on deceased records from the Social Security Administration, potential duplicate voter records in Alabama, or voters that have potentially moved out of the state,” former Alabama secretary of state John Merrill wrote in a memo rebutting claims from the current secretary of state, who made the state the second to pull out of the group.

Karen Sellers, the executive director of the State Board of Elections, is a current ERIC board member. Taylor Brown, general counsel for the State Board of Elections, told the Herald-Leader that the board has not discussed the possibility of leaving ERIC but that Adams’ motion would likely be discussed at the board’s next meeting on Monday.

Kentucky has been a member of ERIC since February 2019.

Michon Lindstrom, a spokesperson for Adams’ office, said that Adams’ motion is “just exploratory at this point” and that the office’s general counsel believes that Adams has the ability to leave ERIC without the state board of elections voting to approve. The consent judgment in question expires March 2025 of this year.

Tammy Patrick, a Senior Advisor to the Elections program at the Democracy Fund, told the Herald-Leader that pulling out of ERIC would hurt states trying to tamp down voter fraud and register new eligible voters.

“There’s a lot of pressure on the secretaries at this moment to leave, and it’s founded on absolutely no facts or evidence. I know Secretary Adams, I have testified in Congress with him, I I think he’s a good secretary, but there’s a lot of pressure on people to make these decisions to leave the agency when it is the only operational system that the states can use to keep the voter rolls updated and accurate,” Patrick said.

Patrick acknowledged that conservative states may eventually move to create their own system akin to ERIC, but that doing so would be costly.

In a response to Adams’ motion filed on Tuesday, Democratic attorney Anna Whites – who was counsel to the Kentucky Democratic Party in the action against Grimes that initiated back in 2017 – argued that the motion amounted to a “blatant attempt” to leave the bipartisan system.

“(Adams) wishes to join the untested methods used (by) other fiercely partisan and right wing states. This Court should deny the request and affirm that Kentucky needs to remain under bipartisan review of its elections process,” Whites wrote.