FILE - Election 2020 Voting Virus Outbreak, Missouri

A sign stands in front of Brookdale Wornall Place directing voters to a new polling location Tuesday, March 10, 2020, in Kansas City, Mo. The senior living facility backed out as a polling place less than 24 hours before Missouri's presidential primary election due to concerns about the coronavirus outbreak. 

Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center on March 6.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) said the state was withdrawing because ERIC would not “require member states to participate in addressing multi-state voter fraud.” West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner (R) said, “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.”

ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin said, “ERIC is never connected to any state’s voter registration system. Members retain complete control over their voter rolls and they use the reports we provide in ways that comply with federal and state laws.” Hamlin also said ERIC “follow[s] widely accepted security protocols for handling the data we utilize to create the reports.”

The announcements follow withdrawals by Alabama and Louisiana in January of 2023 and 2022, respectively. According to its website, ERIC is a nonprofit organization of member-states who share information like voter registration and motor vehicle registration records in order to improve the accuracy of each state’s voter rolls. Twenty-eight states and Washington, D.C. remain members of ERIC.

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