The far right's growing influence and 4 other takeaways from NPR's ERIC investigation

Cleta Mitchell speaks at a conference in Camp Hill, Pa., on April 1, 2022. The influential conservative attorney helped former President Donald Trump as he sought to overturn the 2020 election. She's now working to dismantle ERIC. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Matt Rourke / Matt Rourke

Why are Republicans abandoning one of the best tools the government has to catch voter fraud? That simple question is the focus of a new NPR investigation, published Sunday.

The tool is the Electronic Registration Information Center, better known as ERIC. It was created almost a decade ago as a way for states to share government data, in an effort to keep their voter rolls up to date. It allows election officials better insight into when their voters move and die and the rare times when they vote twice in different states, which is illegal.

“The little secret is that maybe more than 10 years ago, if somebody voted in Ohio, in Florida, in Arizona and Texas, you would have never known,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in an interview with NPR in February. “With ERIC, we can compare our voter rolls to those states.”