Statement: Ken Blackwell on Texas’s Withdrawal from ERIC

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Washington, D.C. – Today, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) released the following statement from Ken Blackwell, Chair of the Center for Election Integrity at AFPI, regarding Texas’s decision to withdraw from the Electronic Registration and Information Center (ERIC). Governor Greg Abbott made this decision official by signing SB 1070 on [DATE], to go into effect this fall.

“Texas’s decision to join several other states and withdraw from ERIC should continue to raise serious concerns for any state still using it. ERIC was initially sold as a non-partisan data system to clean voter rolls. However, it has been transformed into a system that lacks transparency, compromises voter information, and focuses on states registering voters rather than cleaning voter rolls. With Texas joining seven other states around the country and leaving ERIC, Secretaries of State who are still members of the system should conduct an immediate review of ERIC’s effectiveness and validity for their states and voters.”