Glenn Youngkin yanked Virginia out of the Electronic Registration Information Center, a multistate compact that helps ensure up-to-date voter rolls and helps voters register when they move, in 2023.
The reason given: spurious claims of “increasing concerns regarding stewardship, maintenance, privacy, and confidentiality of voter information” and “controversy surrounding the historical sharing of data with outside organizations leveraged for political purposes.”
What the MAGA governor really wanted: no one watching as he and his attorney general, Jason Miyares, embarked on purges of the voter rolls in 2024 and 2025.
Didn’t work – Virginia still voted Democrat in 2024, and then resoundingly replaced Youngkin with Abigail Spanberger.
Spanberger, on March 24, issued Executive Order 13 directing the Virginia Department of Elections to start the process of rejoining ERIC.
That work was completed today, and Virginia is back in ERIC, as the 27th member.
“Accurate, fair, open, and secure elections start with up-to-date voter rolls. In addition to maintaining our existing state-to-state data sharing agreements, rejoining ERIC will give Virginia access to a key source of information that will bolster our comprehensive voter list maintenance processes,” Elections Commissioner Steven Koski said today.
Weird thing to us having to rejoin ERIC – Virginia was a founding member, in 2012, at the behest of Bob McDonnell, a Republican.
McDonnell was a pre-MAGA Republican, that prehistoric version that didn’t go on about elections lost by his side as having been stolen.
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Chris Graham
