By Lauren Cristella and Jeff Greenburg: Don’t take away one of our most effective tools for fighting election fraud

With the 2024 election now in view, ensuring an accurate voter list in Pennsylvania is not a partisan issue. Local election administrators across the state have trumpeted the importance of making sure every eligible voter can vote, is informed when they vote and votes with confidence.

Pennsylvania’s announcement that it will implement automatic voter registration at PennDOT driver and license centers is a leap forward, but there’s more that can be done to ensure that our voter rolls are accurate.

So why are some state politicians trying to take away one of the most essential tools in that work?

Since 2012, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) has been trusted by states led by both Republicans and Democrats as a reliable tool to keep voter rolls up to date and accurate. While ERIC does not actually make any changes to states’ voter rolls (that responsibility lies solely with each state and local officials), it provides member states with important data that allows them to manage their rolls more accurately and efficiently, and to better detect rare instances of illegal voting.

ERIC reports on four groups of people:

• Voters who have moved from one ERIC state to another ERIC state.

• Voters who have moved within the same state.

• Voters with duplicate registrations within the same state.

• Voters who have died.

It’s then up to the counties themselves to use this data to clean their voter rolls.

The result saves money and time for taxpayers. More accurate records mean less returned mail, fewer provisional ballots cast on Election Day, and shorter lines at polling places. The Pennsylvania Department of State reported that, since 2020, counties have been able to remove 130,000 voter records that otherwise wouldn’t have been removed if Pennsylvania wasn’t a member of ERIC.

Unfortunately, partisan actors in states including Ohio, Texas, Virginia, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia have led a nationwide push to abandon ERIC based on unfounded claims. Just last month Pennsylvania’s Senate State Government Committee held a hearing to try to disprove ERIC’s usefulness. Pennsylvania could be hurt in the process — especially if our state legislators succeed in convincing our commonwealth to blindly follow those states off a cliff. With each state that leaves ERIC, its data lists get less useful.

ERIC also makes it easier for new voters to register, but critics have argued that voter registration efforts should be undertaken by political parties, not by the government. But if parties are solely responsible for voter registration, who is speaking for the more than 1.3 million registered Pennsylvanians — nearly a sixth of all registered voters in the commonwealth, and more every day — who are not affiliated with either Democrats or Republicans? Those voters, and especially as-yet-unregistered independents, have every right to be included in the democratic process. Elected officials should focus on representing the wishes of all of those voters, not making excuses for excluding Pennsylvanians from the electoral process.

Other concerns have cited ERIC’s coordination and data-sharing with third-party groups. But these criticisms are disingenuous, as ERIC’s member states — led by both Republicans and Democrats — have agreed on privacy measures that anonymize data to protect voter privacy.

This partisan divide is new. When ERIC was founded in 2012, four of the seven original member states were led by Republicans. But amid a push of disinformation about voting — straight out of the 2020 playbook that sowed unfounded mistrust in mail-in ballots, especially in Pennsylvania — ERIC seems to have gotten caught in the crossfire. And now, with some in Pennsylvania’s Legislature pushing to withdraw from ERIC, one of our most effective tools for maintaining more accurate voter lists and fighting electoral fraud is at risk.

There exists no compelling reason to withdraw from ERIC, and at the moment, there is no viable alternative.

Finding common ground is the only path toward a vibrant and open democracy. Approaching problems through a bipartisan framework will lead to outcomes that improve our commonwealth and our country.

Don’t let Pennsylvania get caught in a partisan dragnet that has made election integrity more challenging in other states.

Lauren Cristella is president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that has promoted, supported and facilitated government ethics and election integrity for over a century. Jeff Greenburg, former director of elections in Mercer County, is the committee’s senior advisor on election administration.