Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

Voter fraud has been a big subject ever since the 2020 election and it gets brought up again with another election coming this fall.

As you may recall six states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona had relatively close elections for the 2020 presidential race. A total of 25.5 million votes were cast for the presidential race in those states and the margins of victory ranged from 10,457, which was the closest in Arizona, to 154,188 in Michigan. The margins were the number of votes now President Joe Biden received to win the race with former President Donald J. Trump.

There were allegations of voter fraud and irregularities made by the Trump campaign. So the Associated Press went to those six states in 2022 to see what cases of fraud might have surfaced. The wait was partially on purpose, it gave time for legal proceedings to be commenced and other checking mechanisms to have taken place, such as the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) which compares state voter registration lists for duplicate files between the 24 states that participate.

In the six states mentioned above, a total of 473 ballots were deemed suspicious. Suspicious could mean two ballots were mailed in from the same address with the same name, two names of ballots or registrants were the same or someone appeared to have voted twice. Of the 473 ballots many were never counted because the duplication was caught in the processes most states use before counting a ballot.

Wisconsin had 31 suspicious ballots, Biden won the state by 20,482 votes. Five people were eventually charged with voter fraud.

Pennsylvania had 26 suspicious ballots, Biden won by 80,555 votes.

Nevada had 98 suspicious ballots, Biden won by 33,596 votes.

Michigan had 56 suspicious ballots, Biden won by 154,188 votes.

Georgia had 64 suspicious ballots, Biden won by 11,779 votes.

Arizona had 198 suspicious ballots, Biden won by 10,457 votes.

The total nationally for the popular vote was Biden, 81,283,501; Trump, 74,223,975.

The ERIC is an interesting cooperative venture that currently has 24 states as members plus Washington D.C. Yes, Minnesota is one of the 24 along with Wisconsin and the other battleground states listed above. North and South Dakota and Iowa are not members.

ERIC gets information from the member states, USPS, state departments of motor vehicles, Social Security and other sources every 60 days or so to update voter lists. It looks for names that occur in more than one state for between state moves, in state moves, duplicate registrations, and deceased information from Social Security.

After an election it can give states a report about possible multiple voting attempts by an individual. And it can do some assumptions about voter participation because the data it sorts includes people who don’t register to vote at all.

It takes security seriously, it’s servers are never connected to a state’s voter registration system, there is no web-based access to ERIC’s servers, the servers are located in the United States, operated by a U.S. vendor and subjected to security audits.  Employees are subject to criminal background checks. It is run by its member states, not the Federal government.

In 2024 as of February 29 it has found 64,968 cross state movers, 245,649 in-state updates, 15,882 in state duplicates and 5,680 duplicates. These are things that are changed for the final voter registration lists. In 2023 it found over 400,000 people in three states who would be potentially eligible but not registered. It’s the kind of system that would catch large influxes of ballots from unregistered voters.

States pay a membership fee of $25,000 and then annual dues. Total budget for ERIC is less than $2 million a year. I’m surprised more states don’t use it.