Keeping voter rolls accurate is a good thing. Even more so in recent years as far too many candidates question election results for their own political gains and far too many citizens have climbed on the bandwagon of doubt and suspicion.
Why then would the new director of the Alaska Division of Elections hesitate to support a decade-old nationwide cooperative effort among states to keep voter registration lists accurate and up to date?
Alaska has been a member of ERIC, which stands for Electronic Registration Information Center, since 2016. The nonprofit was founded in 2012 and counts almost 30 states as members.
Between 2016 and mid-2022, ERIC’s work has helped Alaska elections officials cancel registrations of 14,000 people who no longer lived in the state but were still registered to vote here. The service also identified more than 1,400 individuals who had died but were still on the voter rolls.
During those years, Alaska paid less than $200,000 in total in annual membership dues for the service and mailing expenses to contact individuals on the lists generated by ERIC.
The system works by collecting voter registration data and licensing data from motor vehicle agencies in member states at least every 60 days — public records — then matching that data to locate registered voters who are no longer eligible in their former state of residence. The system also looks for people with duplicate voter registrations in the same state and matches with Social Security Administration data to look for dead people still on voter rolls.
Despite its success in helping Alaska keep its voter lists more accurate, Carol Beecher, who took over as state elections director last month, told legislators in her first committee hearing that she was considering dropping out of ERIC, citing the cost of participation. “We are definitely looking into it,” she told members of the Senate State Affairs Committee earlier this month.
Several Republican-led states have quit ERIC in recent months or are threatening to leave the organization. Former President Donald Trump, never one to let facts and truth get in the way of accusations, has written on his social media platform that Republican-led states should drop out of the nonprofit, alleging, without any proof, that it “‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats.”
Of course, Beecher should look at all spending in her division. But looking at the cost of participating in the voter-roll accuracy project, averaging about $33,000 a year, and measuring that against the public benefit of checking to see if registered voters actually live in the state, and are alive, should be an easy decision.
Measuring that $33,000 against the division’s $13 million budget in an election year should be an easy decision.
Spending $33,000 a year to ensure more trustworthy election rolls for several hundred thousand Alaskans is a bargain.
— Wrangell Sentinel
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