After Public Pressure, Ron DeSantis Flips and Removes Florida From ‘ERIC’ Voter Roll Manipulation System
Following a public pressure campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has flip-flopped and removed his state from the far-left Soros-funded Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC).
“As Secretary of State, I have an obligation to protect the personal information of Florida’s citizens, which the ERIC agreement requires us to share,” said Florida secretary of state Cord Byrd in a press release on Monday. “Florida has tried to back reforms to increase protections, but these protections were refused. Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC.”
Florida joined the states of West Virginia and Missouri in terminating their memberships in ERIC, following the lead of Alabama and Louisiana in doing so. Previously, the DeSantis administration had defended their ties with ERIC and made excuses for their participation in the far-left voter roll manipulation system.
According a report from the American Policy Center, Florida secretary of state Cord Byrd told election integrity activists during a private meeting that “Florida loves ERIC,” and their concerns could be discounted because they use ERIC “a little differently” than other states. However, research by the Florida Republican Assembly and The People’s Audit, two prominent election integrity organizations in Florida, demonstrated that the administration of ERIC in Florida is no less harmful than its usage anywhere else.
Those organizations found over a half million bad or “undeliverable” addresses that were on the voter rolls in Florida due to ERIC’s malfeasance. Additionally, it was found that the bad addresses on the rolls caused the undeliverable mail to pile up in unsecured storage facilities, opening up additional avenues for voter fraud and wasting taxpayer money.
Big League Politics has reported on DeSantis’ weak record on election integrity issues:
“In 2021, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced he was creating an Office of Election Crimes and Security to stop Democrat voter fraud in his state.
“We are excited to say that next legislative session we are proposing another package of election integrity reforms that will make Florida the number one state for elections,” DeSantis said in Nov. 2021 after the announcement of the new office.
“I am excited that with this legislation, our state will be able to enforce election violations, combat voter fraud and make sure violators are held accountable. If potential violators know they will be held accountable, they will be much less likely to engage in improper conduct in the first place,” he added.
As usual, DeSantis paid great lip service to the conservative red meat issue at a time when it would benefit him the most. But how has DeSantis’ Office of Election Crimes and Security actually performed at stopping voter fraud under the microscope?
Not particularly well.
Populist strategist Alex Bruesewitz noted that “every case brought forth” by the Office of Election Crimes and Security “has been dismissed in court,” adding that “DeSantis just puts on a scripted show” and he “won’t fall for it again.”
In the most recent failure by DeSantis’ election crime office, Orange County Circuit Judge Jenifer Harris dismissed their voter fraud case and made a mockery of DeSantis’ supposed authority.
“If the legislature wants a centralized prosecutor with the power to pursue any perceived illegality throughout the state of Florida, the Florida legislature has the authority to create a centralized system,” she wrote. “This court will not facilitate such a concentrated power without legislative authority.”
A similar case brought up by the Office of Election Crimes and Security was dismissed last year as well. Additionally, these charges center around isolated individuals who are accused of violating laws barring certain felons from being able to vote. DeSantis is too cowed to touch the real centers of election fraud: unsecured vote-tabulating computers and unaccountable mail-in ballots.
DeSantis also recently gave a major promotion to a radical leftist, giving an extreme authoritarian Democrat a backdoor into the voter rolls. Last month, DeSantis appointed COVID thug and liberal democrat David Kerner, a Palm Beach commissioner, to head Florida’s State Department of Motor Vehicles where Kerner will have access to sensitive voter data.
Making matters even worse, DeSantis recently hosted a panel with a high-profile attorney for Dominion Voting Systems where DeSantis gave the lawyer a platform to argue that her clients should be more easily able to use lawfare against journalists who expose them.”
Even though Florida withdrawing from ERIC is good news, DeSantis must be watched to ensure that he is not coordinating with the Left or RINOs in other sneaky ways with regards to voter data.
Shane Trejo
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