RICHMOND — Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s elections chief has pulled Virginia from a data-sharing group that red and blue states alike relied on for the past decade to keep voter rolls updated before election deniers made it the focus of attacks.
This latest withdrawal is especially notable because Virginia is a purple state and was a founding member of the group when it was established in 2012 — under another Republican governor, Robert F. McDonnell.
The move is especially surprising given that a leader of the Election Integrity Unit established by Attorney General Jason S. Miyares (R) defended the group within the past year for its ability to help the state clean up its voter rolls and crack down on people who might try to vote in multiple states.
Elections Commissioner Susan J. Beals cited the recent exodus of seven states as part of the justification for pulling Virginia out, saying that could lead to higher costs for remaining member states.
“In short, ERIC’s mandate has expanded beyond that of its initial intent — to improve the accuracy of voter rolls,” she wrote in a letter Thursday notifying ERIC that Virginia was “terminating its relationship” with the group. “We will pursue other information arrangements with our neighboring states and look to other opportunities to partner with states in an apolitical fashion.”
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said in an email to The Washington Post that another reason for the withdrawal was that “Virginians’ data was shared with an ERIC affiliated research organization and despite its efforts, Virginia was unable to reform ERIC.”
Porter was referring to a research project conducted in 2020 in which Virginia election officials volunteered to share data compiled by ERIC with the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR). The center was bound by a nondisclosure agreement for the project, said David Becker, CEIR’s executive director.
“CEIR never shared that data with anybody and deleted the data as soon as the research was over,” said Becker, who helped found ERIC when he led the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts and until recently was a nonvoting board member for ERIC.
Youngkin’s move drew fierce pushback from Virginia Democrats, including Del. Schuyler T. VanValkenburg (D-Henrico), a high school civics teacher who called ERIC “a bipartisan success” and predicted that the withdrawal would make the state’s elections “less secure.”
“This is playing footsie w/ MAGA conspiracies,” he tweeted. “It’s bad governance and dangerous politics.”
But the exit also drew cheers from one of the state’s most prominent Trump supporters, state Sen. Amanda F. Chase (R-Chesterfield), who repeated claims that ERIC was funded by liberal donor George Soros.
ERIC has never received direct funding from Soros but was founded with help from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has, The Post has previously reported. Since its founding, ERIC has operated on taxpayer-funded dues from member states.
“Virginia leaving Soros funded ERIC is a huge win and victory for Virginia and I applaud the Governor for his action,” Chase said in a text to The Post. “ERIC is a national system that Deep State officials say is an important tool to keep voting rolls clean. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it would be used for insidious and nefarious purposes to include an abuse of power in controlling our elections.”
Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said in a written statement that Miyares “has expressed concerns about ERIC and supports the Governor’s decision.”
Miyares formed the Election Integrity Unit last year with up to 20 staffers despite a lack of widespread issues with voter fraud or other irregularities in the state. Josh Lief, who helps oversee the unit, defended ERIC in an email to a critic within the past year, the Virginia Mercury first reported. The Virginia NAACP obtained the email under the Freedom of Information Act last year.
“Virginia was a charter member and it has grown to 33 states including many conservative states like Texas and Florida,” Lief wrote to someone who had raised concerns about the group. “Again, we joined when Bob McDonnell was Governor and Ken Cuccinelli was Attorney General. ERIC is used to clean up voter rolls and check for people that vote more than once in multiple states.”
LaCivita said the “more recent, concerning issues” laid out in Beals’s letter, which alleged that voter data had been shared with outside groups, had arisen since Lief wrote the email.
ERIC was designed to help states work together to keep their voter rolls up to date. Member states share data from their voter-registration rolls and motor vehicle records, which ERIC compiles into reports to help officials remove voters who have died or moved away. The system can also be used to help identify and prosecute anyone who has voted in two states at once.
The member states are also required to send a postcard to every newly eligible, unregistered voter before every federal election. Some Republicans have objected to the part of the mission that encourages voter registration.
The CEIR research project that Virginia took part in was intended to track response rates to the postcards, Becker said. It involved about eight or 10 states.
Porter said Virginia will set up its own system to check records with neighboring states.
“We should have something to replace it with before we withdraw from it — if we withdraw from it at all,” said state Sen. Adam P. Ebbin (D-Alexandria), a member of the Senate’s Privileges and Elections Committee.
Other jurisdictions in the Washington area remain in the consortium, including Maryland and D.C., which have Democratic leaders. Maryland’s deputy elections administrator said participating provides a secure way for the state to keep the voter rolls current.
“We hope to work with Virginia election officials to find alternate ways to share data about voters moving between Maryland and Virginia,” Nikki Baines Charlson said in an email.
Nick Jacobs, a spokesman for the D.C. Board of Elections, said the District remains a member of ERIC and “we plan to continue to be members.”
As he sought the GOP nomination for governor in 2021, Youngkin initially refused to say whether Democrat Joe Biden had legitimately won the 2020 election. At the same time, he played into Trump’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud by making “election integrity” the centerpiece of his campaign.
Youngkin acknowledged Biden’s win after securing the nod but kept election deniers whipped up with his “election integrity” push and by deploying Chase, the self-described “Trump in heels,” as a key surrogate in rural parts of the state.
Last year, Youngkin stood with some of his party’s most vocal election deniers, including Kari Lake of Arizona, as he traveled across the country campaigning for Republican gubernatorial contenders and boosting his own profile ahead of a potential White House bid.
Erin Cox and Meagan Flynn contributed to this report.