ERIC member States in 2022 before The Gateway Pundit reporting.

In January 2022, TGP published a 3-part series about the ERIC non-profit. The Electronic Registration Information Center was supposedly helping 31 states clean their voter rolls. The more data, documents, videos, and transcripts that TGP reviewed, the more ERIC smelled like a cloaked Democrat operation. So we published what we learned about ERIC.

In the weeks and months after our series, the left-wing media conducted an unbelievable campaign to defend ERIC. They, of course, attempted to discredit TGP and intimidate State officials thinking of leaving ERIC. Let’s recap what conservatives are up against.

Eventually, 9 of the 31 member States left the ERIC non-profit for several reasons listed here. Why was the left-wing media ferociously supporting this tiny non-profit with only 3 employees? Well, it gave the left access to states’ voter rolls and their coveted MVD/DMV data too! About a year later, Verity Vote confirmed that ERIC data was, in fact, being shared with the left-wing activist group CEIR and David Becker.

One left-wing organization known for FOIA lawfare is American Oversight. They FOIA’d more than a dozen states that had concerns about ERIC. They collected thousands of pages of their communications and public records. Of course, they used lawsuits, too.

In December 2023, they published “The Campaign to Dismantle ERIC”. This is a comprehensive 29-page report based on the data they collected. According to American Oversight, any questions raised about ERIC were “attacks on a nonpartisan system”. There’s one glaring problem. There was no campaign to dismantle ERIC.

They also created an internal four-part training course titled “Explaining the Campaign Against Nonpartisan Voter-Roll Tool ERIC”. Much of this content is now available online.

It mentions “The Article That Started It All” which goes on to disparage TGP.

American Oversight went on to produce nearly 30 articles in support of ERIC (see image).

American Oversight articles about ERIC

NPR was the rapid response team for the ERIC defense. They published over a dozen articles helping ERIC. In June of 2022, at least 8 staff members were tasked to work on a project defining the origins of the ERIC information. Using social media SMAT analysis software, they tracked any mention of ERIC over a 2-year period. NPR concluded that the national conversation about ERIC started with the TGP articles. The NPR data methodology is on GitHub here.

NPR then published a 5,800-word article supporting ERIC and disparaging TGP. NPR’s websites and apps attract tens of millions of users monthly. This project also included 3 interview podcasts with those key journalists. NPR’s podcast publications have hundreds of millions of downloads per month. Their radio programming reaches 42 million people through 1,000 radio stations.

NPR Chart – TGP the source of ERIC national discussion

These 2 groups barely scratch the surface of the left-wing media’s blitz in support of ERIC. They believed a coordinated campaign was being conducted against ERIC. But there was no campaign. TGP simply raised questions about an unusual non-profit that had a shady left-wing activist as its founder and salesperson (David Becker).

Readers across the country started to ask the same questions about ERIC and contacted state officials by the thousands. Those officials looked into their ERIC memberships and asked questions of ERIC leadership. When ERIC’s CEO, Shane Hamlin, couldn’t answer satisfactorily or declined to answer, these States quit their ERIC membership. David Becker resigned his Board seat and tweeted he would “not accept renomination to ERIC’s board.”

The money and resources available to the left and Democrats is truly astounding – reports, analysis, training, lawsuits, FOIA, and so on. Above are just two examples of groups that activated to support ERIC – now multiply that by dozens.

We analyzed all statements that said TGP was debunked. Oddly, no content was disputed. What they really mean is “I wish they hadn’t written about that part of ERIC”. This is how the left operates, creating a synthetic narrative, then amplifying it.

To learn why States left ERIC, read for yourself directly from Secretary of State officials:
OHIO – Letter Quitting ERIC
FLORIDA – Letter Quitting ERIC

Florida withdraws from ERIC over Partisan and Data Privacy concerns. Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

You can email Jim Hoft here, and read more of Jim Hoft's articles here.

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