There’s a campaign among the right to get states to drop participation in ERIC ( Electronic Registration Information Center ). This is a system that lets states share data on voters who die or move out of state. So it can, for example, help discover people who vote in more than one state. The recent news is that Louisiana has dropped out of the system:
I have a feeling that this is related to the recent (in the last few months) case of three Florida voters who were caught voting in two different states in the last general election. They were from The Villages, a big retirement community in central Florida and a big Republican stronghold. I’m wondering if at least one of those people were big Republican donors. Make that four of them:
Now there’s no question that ERIC can be abused. I remember that a few years ago, Georgia was removing voters using ERIC but only matching them on the basis of first and last name. That’s definitely abuse, since just first and last does not definitely identify people. (For example, I knew three different people named Russell Brown by the time I was 25.) Other factors, like date of birth, have to be used. But if they do use multiple data points, it’s not a bad system. But only if most states participate.
… since the state joined ERIC in 2014, the program has identified more than 16,000 dead people on Louisiana’s voting lists and more than 54,000 people who have moved out of the state. But by choosing to leave, the state will no longer have access to that data.
I can’t for the life of me understand why people supposedly so concerned about election integrity would drop out of a system that potentially prevented 70,000 fraudulent votes.
(I mean, you can go with stupidity, paranoia, or pure evil, but none of them make any sense.)
Because they aren’t really interested in preventing voter fraud. This system catches voter fraud, but that includes voter fraud by Republican voters. Can’t be having that.
Voting in more than one state in the same election is often (usually?) done by people who own homes in more than one state. Those will more likely vote R rather than D. The examples from The Villages were probably all R voters.
That makes sense. But this opens the door for people who simply move out of state – without continuing to own a home in their original state – to vote in both their old and new states. Those can easily be people of either party – and they likely outnumber dual-home owners 100 to 1.
I could imagine a scenario where someone who owns a home in more than one state would want to vote legitimately in each, for local/state issues and representation. Whereas, voting twice for President would be prohibited.
Those people would have to vote absentee in their old state. In my state, which has all-vote-by-mail, ballots are not allowed to be forwarded. If the person no longer lives there, their ballot must be returned to the Elections Office. Even if the forwarding address is within the state. I’m fairly certain this is enforced by the Postal Service. That is, the Postal Service doesn’t forward ballots.
Sure, but if people are determined to cheat, they can find a way to get those absentee ballots from their old state. I live near the Illinois-Wisconsin border, and plenty of people live in one and work in the other. Just swing by the old place on your way home from work, and you too can commit election fraud!
Agreed – but you could say the same about dual-home people, too. The point is that withdrawing from ERIC makes it easier for those so determined to actually get away with it.
Well, there you go – people who can afford a second home are presumed (accurately or otherwise) to skew Republican; ergo, the Republican Party is opposed to actual voter integrity measures that might stop them from cheating.
Well, yes, but if were paying property taxes on my secondary residence, I would like to have some say in what goes on locally, yah? Taxation without representation, and all that.
I’d disagree and say that your investment in a place that you do not principally reside is less than those that do. You are, in effect, a guest of the area. But it’s a digression from the thread and I did get my answer so I’ll stop.
Did a bit of research and couldn’t find much about other multi-state voters in Florida. Just this one article from 2016 about an analysis of the 2014 election:
Since that wasn’t a Presidential election, those may not have been illegal, but I expect that if they vote twice then, they’ll have also voted twice for President. Anyway this shows the problem is not restricted to one retirement community nor only Republican voters. Further down the article:
I don’t how these two analyses found the multiple voters. That detail was not mentioned. The guy in 2014 may have had access to the ERIC db; ERIC did not exist yet in 2004 for the earlier analysis.
