Trump Didn’t Find Voter Fraud. He Manufactured A Crisis.
By Democracy Docket Photos: YouTube Screenshot|Wikimedia Commons Donald Trump didn’t reveal evidence of voter fraud on Thursday night. Instead, his speech was the culmination of a crisis he and Republicans manufactured as an excuse to take over elections. Despite his lies, Trump does not actually want accurate voter rolls. He wants to decide which U.S. citizens can register and which cannot — who can cast a ballot and who is denied, and which elections are certified and which are rejected. That is why he has pushed the SAVE Act, legislation that makes registering to vote much more burdensome. It is why he has falsely claimed that states are his agents for counting ballots. And it is what motivated his despicable speech. For more than a decade, a bipartisan group of 32 states, plus Washington, D.C., maintained an interstate voter registration compact that facilitated the sharing of information. The Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, existed to improve the accuracy of state voter rolls by sharing information among member states. For example, if a voter moved to a new state, that information would be shared to ensure the person was removed from the rolls in the state they moved from. Similarly, if a voter dies, every ERIC member state gets notified if the deceased person is still on their rolls. It was, by nearly all accounts, a big success — earning praise from Democratic and Republican election officials alike. Those concerned about duplicate or fraudulent registrations were among its supporters. That is, until right-wing lies began circulating about ERIC following the 2020 election. Louisiana left in 2022. But the real exodus of GOP-led states came in 2023 when, not coincidentally, Donald Trump posted on social media that “All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up.” One by one, Republican states left ERIC — often over the strong objection of their own Republican election officials. Today, ERIC has only five Republican-controlled member states: Alaska, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Utah. Even that overstates GOP participation, since Kentucky has a Democratic governor. The result has been predictable…
Black News 
By Democracy Docket
Photos: YouTube Screenshot|Wikimedia Commons
Donald Trump didn’t reveal evidence of voter fraud on Thursday night. Instead, his speech was the culmination of a crisis he and Republicans manufactured as an excuse to take over elections.
Despite his lies, Trump does not actually want accurate voter rolls. He wants to decide which U.S. citizens can register and which cannot — who can cast a ballot and who is denied, and which elections are certified and which are rejected.
That is why he has pushed the SAVE Act, legislation that makes registering to vote much more burdensome. It is why he has falsely claimed that states are his agents for counting ballots. And it is what motivated his despicable speech.
For more than a decade, a bipartisan group of 32 states, plus Washington, D.C., maintained an interstate voter registration compact that facilitated the sharing of information. The Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, existed to improve the accuracy of state voter rolls by sharing information among member states.
For example, if a voter moved to a new state, that information would be shared to ensure the person was removed from the rolls in the state they moved from. Similarly, if a voter dies, every ERIC member state gets notified if the deceased person is still on their rolls.
It was, by nearly all accounts, a big success — earning praise from Democratic and Republican election officials alike. Those concerned about duplicate or fraudulent registrations were among its supporters.
That is, until right-wing lies began circulating about ERIC following the 2020 election.
Louisiana left in 2022. But the real exodus of GOP-led states came in 2023 when, not coincidentally, Donald Trump posted on social media that “All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up.”
One by one, Republican states left ERIC — often over the strong objection of their own Republican election officials. Today, ERIC has only five Republican-controlled member states: Alaska, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Utah. Even that overstates GOP participation, since Kentucky has a Democratic governor.
The result has been predictable…
