Evaluating Partisan Registrations Amid the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) Controversy

Election integrity is paramount in a healthy democracy. The American system places the responsibility of essential election administration functions, such as cleaning lists of registered voters as people change addresses, move across state lines, or pass away, with state and local officials. To overcome this collective action problem, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was created as a collaboration between states, whereby members share administrative data to ensure clean voter registration lists and encourage individuals who are eligible but unregistered (EBUs) to register to vote. Through experiments in partnership with ERIC member states, researchers found that contact from state officials increased registration and turnout among EBUs. Despite ERIC’s primary focus on maintaining the accuracy of voter rolls, it was criticized in early 2022 by conservatives, who accused it of being a tool for partisan electioneering. In the aftermath of this criticism, nine Republican-led states left ERIC, prompting concerns that this would make election administration more difficult. We assess the validity of these attacks and provide strong evidence that contributes to the debate about whether mobilizing the unregistered population produces partisan advantage. By leveraging field experiments conducted by ERIC member states during the 2016 election in Pennsylvania and Nevada (two important swing states), we find that ERIC’s efforts had little differential effect on party registration or turnout. We discuss the importance of efforts to provide states with tools to maintain clean voter rolls and to connect with eligible, but hard-to-reach potential voters who often get ignored by campaigns.