Why Do Republicans Care So Little About Voter Fraud?
Alabama secretary of state tosses voting security out the window and decides technology cannot be trusted
Alabama’s new secretary of state, Wes Allan, performing his first act in office, decided to “protect” the state of Alabama and its voters from the unfolding, right-wing conspiracy allegedly being caused by a computer program called “ERIC.”
It sounds scary, right? It reminds me of the 1977 sci-fi movie called The Demon Seed.
Demon Seed is a 1977 American science fiction–horror film directed by Donald Cammell. It stars Julie Christie and Fritz Weaver. The film was based on the 1973 novel of the same name by Dean Koontz and concerns the imprisonment and forced impregnation of a woman by an artificially intelligent computer. Gerrit Graham, Berry Kroeger, Lisa Lu, and Larry J. Blake also appear in the film, with Robert Vaughn uncredited as the voice of the computer (Demon Seed).
Is ERIC likely to impregnate a resident of Alabama? Unlikely, but it could, in the whacked-out-minds right-wingers and MAGA-its, alter the votes in Alabama, changing them from consistently pro-fascist to suddenly supporting democracy. What is ERIC, you ask?
The tool is a shared database called the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC for short. It allows states to securely share voter registration data across state lines and with several other government agencies, like the Social Security Administration and departments of motor vehicles (Right-Wing Conspiracies Have a New Target).
One of the primary purposes for creating ERIC was to inform states when a new resident moved into their jurisdiction and was not registered to vote. The state could reach out to citizens and offer them ways to get registered. As we know, expanding the voting rolls is not something Republicans like to do.
Republicans consider their constituents more civically active and more likely to take care of such matters as re-registering to vote when moving from one state to another.
Elderly voters, minorities, and youth, some of the cohorts less apt to head off to some random local government office and get set up to vote in their new states legally, are often Democratic voters. By making the whole process as complicated as possible, rightists are trying to frustrate people, so they give up on their right to vote.
Secretary Allan was ready to explain his decision to anyone willing to listen.
“I made a promise to the people of Alabama that ending our state’s relationship with the ERIC organization would be my first official act as Secretary of State,” Allen said in a statement. The letter said that Alabama would immediately cease transmitting data.pro
The Republican, who had pledged to withdraw from ERIC during his campaign, cited privacy concerns for the decision (Republican Secretary of State First Act).
Making it more accessible is not what the right wants
32 states in the United States consider the ERIC service an excellent assistance for providing states with information about when someone has moved from one state to another. Get a license in your new state and, assuming your old and new states are members of the ERIC database, then information goes out to both states. In one state, they remove you from the voting records; in the other, the voter is either added or information is sent instructing them how to register.
This is an excellent service and one that can prevent mistakes from happening by a voter being on the voting rolls simultaneously in two states, which in red states is a reason to arrest that person; and, it can rapidly and easily expand the right and privilege that we as Americans in our democracy should cherish the most: the right to vote.
The thing is, the right doesn’t want to expand the voter rolls. They understand that demography is against them. They know that a fair amount of their base consists of elderly white voters who will soon become politically irrelevant. So, by expanding the rolls, they are strengthening the foundation for their eventual defeat.
In addition, by making the voting process as confusing and bureaucratically complex as possible, they ensure that people will more readily fall foul of the unseen bureaucratic monster. Rightists love to pretend that they are against the government. Still, they are always for more government when it can create snafus and barriers to a more participatory democracy by people who are physically, culturally, and often religiously different from them.
By increasing the chances that someone will forget to de-register in one state before re-registering to vote in another state, Republicans can always point to the myth that Democratic voters are more likely to commit voter fraud than Republican voters. In most instances where Americans have been found guilty of voter fraud, it is Republican voters getting caught.
Jason Schofield, a Republican, pleaded guilty to using voters’ personal information illegally to obtain absentee ballots as a Rensselaer County election commissioner (Former New York Election Official).
The former Alabama Secretary of State John Merril, who did not run for reelection, is a Trump supporter and supports ERIC. He has come out and expressed frustration with his fellow Republicans.
That far-right pushback has been somewhat frustrating to Merrill, who noted the system provides the only way states have to accurately check whether someone has illegally cast a ballot in the same election in two states.
“It helps identify duplicate registrations,” Merrill said. “It helps identify dual participation in elections. That’s a concern [and] there’s no other way that any state in the union can do that independently of ERIC (Right-Wing Conspiracies Have a New Target) ”.
David Becker, an elections expert and former Justice Department attorney who led the development of ERIC while working at the Pew Charitable Trusts, had this to say:
Becker, who now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, says it’s because election deniers don’t want voting to be more secure or efficient. It’s the same reason, he says, they often oppose ballot drop boxes even though they are considered a more secure way to return mail ballots than using the Postal Service.
“They don’t care about actual integrity,” Becker said. “They only care that their side wins. That is the most anti-democratic idea that I can imagine (Right-Wing Conspiracies Have a New Target) ”.
It’s a real tug-o-war. We pull for democracy, and the right uses our democracy to create laws to kill democracy. It’s the oldest trick in the book and one that the like of Hitler has successfully used and, most recently, Putin.
Maybe we should give up on places like Alabama? Let them wallow in their ignorance.