Election officials from states participating in a bipartisan effort to ensure accurate voter rolls decided Friday not to implement rule changes pushed by Republicans amid conspiracies against the group, causing more GOP-leaning states to leave.

The Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, has a track record of fighting voter fraud by identifying those who have died or moved between states. Yet it has also aroused suspicion among some Republican state leaders

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after a series of online stories surfaced last year questioning the center’s funding and purpose.

Earlier this month, Republican election officials from Florida, Missouri and West Virginia said they planned to withdraw from the group and join Louisiana and Alabama. Former President Donald Trump has taken to social media to call on every Republican-led state to leave, characterizing it as a “terrible

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system that pumps the rolls for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up.

On Friday, state representatives from the group met remotely for about three hours to discuss the changes promoted by Republicans, including the removal of the obligation for members to send notices to people who are eligible but not registered to vote . Currently, ERIC consists of 32 states and the District of Columbia, but that number will decrease once Alabama, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia formally leave later this year.

After Friday’s meeting, Republican secretaries of state in Iowa and Ohio were the last to say they would back down.

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Ohio’s action today follows nearly a year of good faith, bipartisan efforts to reform ERIC’s oversight and services, wrote Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is considering running for the U.S. Senate in 2024 , in a letter. Unfortunately, these attempts to salvage an unparalleled election integrity service have failed.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said he would recommend to the governor and legislature that the state terminate its membership in ERIC because of the organization’s decision not to change its membership agreement. He also said the departure of several other states makes the network less valuable.

ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin said in an emailed statement that the proposals were under serious consideration, but that members voted to maintain the current requirements of the program.

We hope that all states choose to join ERIC, as it is the most effective tool available to ensure that voter rolls are as accurate as possible and detect potential cases of illegal voting, Hamlin said.

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, a Republican, will proceed with the state’s plans to exit the system, spokesman Mike Queen said after Friday’s meeting.

The departure has frustrated some state election officials who remain involved in the effort.

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It is noteworthy that the states at the forefront of these attacks, which have a renewed desire to refrain from sending eligible citizens information on how to register to vote, are led by Republican politicians who are actively trying to win favor with their party’s extremists and, in most cases, Trump himself, to advance their own future aspirations for higher office,”

said

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat,

said

in a statement.

The states’ departure threatens to undermine a voluntary effort that for more than a decade has served as the only national system that helps states identify voters who are ineligible to vote.

The system works by states sharing certain data through secure channels, allowing election officials to identify and remove people from voter rolls who have died or moved to other states. ERIC also helps identify states and ultimately prosecute people who vote in multiple states.

The system has been credited in Maryland with identifying about 66,000 voters who may have died and 778,000 people who may have moved out of the state since 2013. In Georgia, officials said nearly 100,000 voters who were no longer eligible to vote in the state had been purged based on data provided by ERIC.

A conspiracy against the system claims billionaire philanthropist George Soros funded it. While the voter data sharing system received initial funding from the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts, that money was separate from funding provided to Pew by a Soros-affiliated organization that went toward an unrelated effort, Hamlin said. Since then, the system has been financed through annual contributions from the Member States.

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It seemed likely that other Republican-led states could also leave. Alaska will continue to evaluate its membership in ERIC and we do not plan to make any immediate decisions, Division of Elections spokesman Tiffany Montemayor said in an email to the

AP Associated Press.

In Texas, state election officials last week announced plans to implement their own interstate voter registration cross-checking program, though it’s unclear how they’ll do it.

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to do so and how effective such an effort would be, especially if only a handful of states are concerned. Legislation has since been introduced that would force Texas to withdraw from ERIC.

Florida and Texas, with their combined 30.5 million actively registered voters, would represent a significant loss to data sharing.

With no national clearinghouse for voter registration, ERIC is the only interstate data sharing program. It was started in 2012 by seven states and has been bipartisan since its inception, with four of the founding states led by Republicans at the time.

In California, Kansas and New Hampshire, lawmakers have introduced bills that would allow their states to join, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks voting laws. New York is another populous non-system state.

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One change sought by Republicans was to remove what they characterize as partisan influences within ERIC. They targeted David Becker, a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who served in both the Clinton and United States

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Bush administrations. Becker, who was involved in the development of the ERIC system at Pew, has one of the two nuns

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voting seats in the board. The other has been empty.

A group of Republicans, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, defended Becker in a public letter, citing attacks on him as disinformation.

Becker, who now directs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said this week that he has informed ERIC that he will not accept requests.

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nomination to the board. Hamlin said ERIC member states on Friday decided not to eliminate either

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voting seats in the board.

The states that remain in ERIC have fought back valiantly against disinformation and election denial, and I hope they will continue to do so and support their local election officials who rely on the ERIC data as we move into 2024,” Becker said in a statement. post on social media this week.

Smyth reports from Columbus, Ohio. Associated Press writers Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa; Leah Willingham of Charleston, W.Va.West Virginia; and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska contributed to this report.