Florida is joining a multi-state compact, giving local elections supervisors access to voter logs in other states. It’s through a new law that went into effect New Years Day.
The new law allows the Department of State to join E.R.I.C (ERIC), the Election Registration Information Center.
“The Electronic Registration Information Center is a clearinghouse that allows Florida’s supervisors to send information to ensure that individuals who are registered in the state of Florida are not dually registered in other jurisdictions," Former Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said.
Sancho says before this law, elections supervisors in Florida had no effective method to ensure citizens were not voting in multiple jurisdictions, a problem that revealed itself back in 2012 when the state attempted to "purge" Florida's voter registration database of non-citizens.
In November, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a link to a 2012 article saying Florida had about 180,000 ineligible voters. But after several reviews and lawsuits, the state revised the figure down to a little over 200 people once it checked a federal database.
Under the new law the Department of State must provide a report to the governor and presiding officers providing the number of voters removed from voter registration lists as a result of information sharing.
