CHARLESTON – West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner has pulled the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center effectively immediately.
West Virginia, Florida and Missouri all left ERIC March 6. Louisiana and Alabama previously resigned.
The states left following a February ERIC Board of Directors meeting in Washington, D.C., when the board rejected recommended changes that Warner says would have prevented third-party influences from serving as non-state ex officio members to the ERIC board. He says the board also tabled the vote of several other membership changes recommended by a bi-partisan working group despite having months of discussions and communications with member states about the proposals.
Warner
“There is no defensible justification to allow any opportunity for partisanship in voter registration and list maintenance, much less in the administration of our nation’s elections,” Warner said in a press release. “It truly is a shame that an organization founded on the principle of nonpartisanship would allow the opportunity for partisanship to stray the organization from the equally important principle of upholding the public’s confidence.”
With the ERIC board’s recent actions, Warner said the inexplicable opportunity remains for partisan, non-state actors to hold influential positions within the organization.
He said West Virginia will take the necessary steps to supplement state list-maintenance data sources that ERIC had facilitated. The state will continue list maintenance efforts to identify voters who move out of the state with the U.S. Postal Service. Deceased voters can be identified via the Social Security Administration Master Death File, abandoned voter registrations from DMV and other means.
“West Virginia's County Clerks have completed tremendous amounts of work and we now have the cleanest voter rolls in the history of our state,” Warner said. “That work will continue as we protect against both perceived and real threats from undue influence and partisanship in election administration.”