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Registration Details

CANDIDNESS, TRANSPARENCY, MISSION and AGENDA

Before we proceed further we must acknowledge that questions have been raised ^{[4], [5], [6], [7], [8]} about the veracity of the goals and practices stated on the ERIC web site ^[2], to wit:

...sole mission of assisting states...

ERIC demands data from states, but there is no reciprocal requirement that the states actually use the product of ERIC's data analysis to clean rolls of ineligible voters. The result is that huge inaccuracies remain in State voter registrations - which calls into question true mission of ERIC if the voter rolls are still in disarray after over eleven years of operation.

ERIC demands specific data from states that exceeds that necessary to maintain accurate voter rolls. No explanation is provided as to the real purpose of this data or how it would be used to address accuracy.

Organizations other than States receive ERIC data. This calls into question the statement regarding the sole mission of ERIC

ERIC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization...

The inception of ERIC was funded by Democrat activists with clearly partisan goals, the partisan foundation of which remains in ERIC's processes ^[8]

...run by the states who choose to join

While ERIC is "run by the states", its inception was with mostly Democrat states who early-on established rules favorable to partisan Democrat goals. Subsequent modification of these rules is extremely difficult, as states must agree to the rules prior to joining. After joining, overcoming the Democrat-initiated partisan rules to which they had already "agreed" is very difficult.

ERIC does NOT partner with media companies...

There is no need to do so. ERIC data is made available to other organizations for undocumented and uncontrolled purposes.

...for all eligible citizens

ERIC is aware that States have non-citizens on their voter rolls. Oddly, ERIC prohibits States from forwarding these records, implying that ERIC could be OK with these records remaining in State voter registration databases and not cleaned-up.

In fact, the States of Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia have already terminated or initiated plans to terminate participation in ERIC because of the above concerns ^{[9], [10], [11], [12], [13]}.

In summary, the proposal below is predicated on being implemented by an organization that is truly nonpartisan, whose sole mission is ensuring voter registration data contains all legal voters and only legal voters. Following a thorough examination and investigation of ERIC's true mission, we will recommend whether ERIC should be the basis of implementation of Voter Registration, or dissolved and replaced.

THE PROPOSAL

Today's State voter registration systems are problematic to keep current, and have been shown to be woefully inaccurate, exposing elections to fraud as acknowledged by the Supreme Court in 2008 ^[1]. Trust in election integrity is so important that America's voter registration system must be enhanced to be as reliable as our financial institutions, and as secure and fully featured as those systems. Rather than start over, it is proposed that the existing Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) ^[2],[3] be enhanced to provide an air-tight, feature-rich voter registration system. Details of the required functionality, features and processes are as follows:

• Create a database of ALL potentially eligible voters - a list of all SSNs
• The database must contain all fields used by ANY state to determine eligibility to vote. Examples include DOB, address, citizenship, felonies, etc. Look ahead to non-ERIC member states, to be prepared for the possibility they would join ERIC in the future.
• Provide for flagging voters whose information should not be made available to the public for security reasons. Provide for granting access to approved administrator and/or auditor accounts to view and/or update this information.
• The database should be loaded with the voter's photograph and signature from the State's official Photo ID source (MVD?)
• The database must contain fields that support implementation of user preferences. Examples include email address, mobile phone, home phone, preferred language, preferred method of contact, etc.
• The database must be transactional – no information ever removed; only superseded then updated
• The system must be accountable - every transaction identified with who, what, when, where, why, on which machine, and CRC integrity calculation of the entry
• The system must retain ERIC’s cryptographic one-way hash for security
• The system must implement a Voter Account (similar to a bank account), pre-loaded with voter bona fides
• When the system is ready it should be widely communicated to the public in member States, explaining why there is a "new" voter registration system, what it aims to achieve, and what voters need to do
• Voters should then be contacted, provided an initial password, and asked to login to verify their bona fides within "n" days
• If information is correct, ask voter to confirm. If in error, provide a link to request that it corrected
• Ask voters to indicate their preferred language. This field must be State-dependent, based on ballot language options supported by that State
• Ask voters to provide, and establish their preferences for contact - text, email, postal mail
• Like financial institutions, enhanced ERIC must provide robust activity notifications to voters. Timely electronic communication methods should be strongly encouraged over postal mail communication.
• Voters will be notified of system initiated actions or changes and asked to login to confirm (i.e., click OK) or provide a link to get it corrected. Examples include registration initialization and Voter Account creation, address change, name change (e.g., marriage), felony conviction, felony overturned, adjudicated mentally incompetent, citizenship granted, etc.
• Voters will be notified of system initiated housekeeping tasks and asked to respond. Examples include reported death [sic], notification that they haven't voted in "n" years and their registration may be inactivated, response to voter requests to correct registration errors, etc.
• The system will respond to voter initiated changes with a courtesy acknowledgment of the activity, providing the voter the ability to respond if they did not make the change. Examples include password update, preference update, acknowledgment of intent to vote in upcoming election, notification of vote received, etc.
• When indicating their intent to vote:
• The system should remind the voter of their States' processes. Examples include voting date(s), when to expect receipt of their ballot, in-person voting, address of their local polling station, photo ID, etc.
• The system should provide for entry of a one-time ballot mailing address different from their permanent address. This feature will accommodate military, student and other legitimate temporary residences to which ballots should be mailed. With this provision NO legitimate ballot should ever need to be forwarded by the Postal Service.
• When the voter casts a vote the system must immediately notify the voter and suggest that they login to their Voter Account and confirm that their vote was correctly recorded. The system should provide for confirming that the vote was correctly recorded, for reporting an incorrectly recorded vote, that the voter had not cast the vote, or report election irregularities. The system should specifically inquire if their ballot was "harvested" by anyone.

Next, there are opportunities for efficiencies and consistency of processes that would result in reduced costs and reduced voter confusion as they move from state-to-state. These opportunities include:

• ERIC could mail voter registration cards to voters if States feel paper voter registration cards are still needed
• States could provide district boundary information to ERIC. With this information ERIC could inform States of how many registered voters who intend to vote are in each district/precinct etc.
• States could then provide the appropriate number of ballots to ERIC for each district/precinct
• ERIC could then mail ballots to voters

Finally, on election day at the polling station:

• Polling officials would be able to pull up the voter's photograph and signature from the voter registration system to compare with the photo ID presented to them, and the live voter's face and signature
• Since polling officials are not experts in facial recognition and signature verificatoin, facial recognition and signature verification software could be used to compare live voter information with the information contained in the ERIC database.

DATA ACCESS

Assess to data contained in ERIC must be tightly controlled, as it contains personal data and because nefarious actors could repurpose the data for other uses. All requests for access to data should:

• Require explicit justification and documentation of the purpose of the request
• Require documentation of how the data will be protected from access
• Require pre-approval to audit that organization's use of the data for compliance to use for the stated purposes
• Be communicated to State SOS, Senate majority and minority leadership, and House majority and minority leadership for review and approval prior to being provided access

STATE CONTROL

It is important to remember that States unilaterally control their voting processes, that processes can vary from State-to-State, and that States can opt-out at any time if they believe the process is not meeting their election integrity needs. The proposed enhanced ERIC system will offer a service - world-class best-in-class cost-effective - that will be desired by the States and succeed based on the features, efficiency, timeliness and effectiveness of its service offering.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why would ERIC track voters who reside in non-participating States?

If a voter moves from a participating State to a non-participating State, the participating State will need to be aware that the voter has moved out of its jurisdiction so that the voter can be removed from its voter registration list. This is a backup in the event that the voter is not diligent to notify the participating state.

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