KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Election officials in Missouri are in the process of changing how they make sure voter rolls are updated for future elections amidst concerns over data sharing, clunky user faces, and overall election security.
In March 2023, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft informed the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) that Missouri would be leaving, making it one of nearly 10 states to back out of the multi-state group.
ERIC was created in 2012, trying to make it easier for member states to compare voter information to update their state voting information.
“Our mission is to help election officials improve the accuracy of their voter rolls and improve access to voter registration information,” ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin said in an email to FOX4.
Ashcroft’s move came roughly a year after other states, also lead by Republicans and Republican Election Officials, had started pulling out from ERIC after a series of critical articles on the conservative website Gateway Pundit.
Ashcroft says the timing might match up, but he had concerns with how ERIC worked even before then, at least partially around how Missouri could use the data and ERIC collected.
“I can’t say that I knew that there were [data] leaks, but if you can’t even write good policy that you’re going to strive to follow, that’s a non-starter,” Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft says he tried to get ERIC to consider some policy changes, but the organization ultimately rejected all of Ashcroft’s suggestions.
“The ERIC membership met in March to discuss and vote on matters that would shape how the organization works to accomplish its mission,” Hamlin wrote in an email. “Serious consideration was given to proposals for change. Following their own rules, the members voted to maintain ERIC’s current requirements.”
“I just would suggest that they’re not making the changes that they should make and with technology’s changes, I think we can do a lot without going through them,” Ashcroft said.
Despite the political uniformity of the other states that have also opted out of ERIC, Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners Democratic Director Lauri Ealom says ERIC didn’t live up to what it was supposed to do.
“We thought we were going to have a system that allowed us to interface voters state to state,” Ealom said. “That’s helpful because we want people to vote where they need to vote but if you can’t access the data in a timely matter, it’s not sufficient.”
Ealom says with more voters concerned about election integrity, not using a database that would slow her workers down would be helpful. She and Ashcroft agree that state workers would likely be able to update the voter lists just as well, if not better, than ERIC.
“We did it before we had ERIC, we’ve been doing it,” Ealom said. “We’re all investigators, P.I’s so to speak, without formal training, but over the years we have become experts.