Last night I registered to give my comments virtually to the committee this morning. I rearranged my work schedule for this sole purpose. I received the link this morning with all the instructions and connected into the meeting waiting to speak but to my surprise, no comments were allowed. Is the public going to be cut out of the process unless it is a brand new bill? The Chair introduced the last set of bills, of which SB606 was one, as "moving to the bills that were contested." Given this, shouldn't discussion from ordinary Virginians with their concerns and comments been allowed before a vote which could (and did) send it to the floor for passage? Having a similar bill pass in the House earlier in session should have no bearing on testimony when the bill is sent to the other chamber for crossover, especially when the vote was razor thin. Regarding the bill. one of the greatest concerns is the fact that ERIC is allowed to share our private information without our consent or even our knowledge. That includes minors. There are other substantive reasons for concern but this privacy issue is so important that no one should support this bill if they believe the individual should control their personal information, including SS# and DOB. The state should have no ability to leverage or share without the voter's express and fully informed permission. I hope the committee and the House leadership will take these comments to heart.

Rather disappointed that I signed up to speak and they completely did not allow any comments from the public. SB196 (Oppose): The general public has a right and a duty under the constitution, and expressed in HAVA and NVRA, to be fully engaged in the elections process, and that includes their right to oversee, verify and validate voter rolls. - Removes the ability for voters to address issues with their registrar. (They are forced to go through 3 person court challenge) - Removes the ability to use public documents such as obituaries, etc. - As VA also does not release information to the public that has unique identifying information about individuals on it, there is no method by which a member of the general public could have the necessary documentation to use to challenge a voter. This law effectively cuts the public out of the process to verify and validate voter rolls. This is a depravation of the public right under color of law. - Is overly proscriptive as to how the courts (a seperate constitutional body) shall adjudicate any potential challenges. SB577 (Oppose): Why do we need special treatments and carve outs for this? I do not see a justification for this set of exemptions. SB606 (Oppose): While the concept of ERIC is not altogether objectionable, the ERIC organization has shown itself to repeatedly act in violation of its charter and in violation of VA disclosure laws. (a) While VA was a member, ERIC routinely provided PII information on VA citizens that it received from the state Health, DMV, and ELECT offices to left wing organizations in violation of VA privacy laws and in violation of their charter and ethical responsibilities to not have political bias. (b) ERIC was failing miserably to execute on its core mission: to find duplicate or errant records and help clean up state voter rolls. Instead ERIC focuses almost exclusively on identifying "Eligible but Unregistered" voters and aggressively pursuing them to register. Ask Susan Beales how many errant records were identified and removed via ERIC ... the answer is shocking small considering the money and support they are provided. (c) Multiple member states (including VA) attempted to address and correct these issues, and were unable to do so. That formed the justification for Susan Beales decision to withdraw from ERIC.

I am opposed to SB606. There are many reasons against re-entering into an agreement with ERIC, including the astronomical sum of $200,000 that VA recently spent to entice individuals who had ALREADY declined to register to vote, to change their mind. This number was provided by the Commissioner to the General Assembly a few weeks ago. Moreover, the ERIC member agreement contradicts Federal law. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires disclosure to the public of all records involved in a state’s voter registration program, upon request. The ERIC agreement, however, prohibits disclosure of “ERIC data” to anyone without a court order. “ERIC data” is mainly a reformulation of state-provided information to ERIC. ERIC has no special rights to that data, and the agreement violates preemptive Federal law by prohibiting the disclosure of that data. Nowhere does the NVRA require a court order for disclosure. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Project Vote v. Long, 682 F.3d 331 (4th Cir. 2012) held that the NVRA’s requirement for public disclosure of all voter roll data to be sweeping. The legislature is not empowered to require the executive branch to enter into a legally flawed agreement. Therefore, SB 606 should be a non-starter.

Please oppose SB606. ELECT needs to take full responsibility to ensure the accuracy of the registered voter list (RVL) before it enters into an agreement with ERIC. ERIC’s initial intent was to improve the accuracy of VA’s RVL by comparing other states voting data with ELECT to prevent duplicate registrations. ELECT has no supporting documentation that any voter registration data comparison was done with other states for 2021 to 2023. FOIA request dated Jan. 31, 2024: Please provide the dates that ELECT's voter data (RVL, voter history, etc.) was compared with other states voter data for 2021, 2022 and 2023. Please include the state, the date done, number of issues identified, number of mailings sent. ELECT's Response dated Feb. 13, 2024: Attached is the list maintenance calendars partially records responsive to your request. We have no records responsive to "number of issues identified". For states ELECT completed list maintenance with and any NCOA mailings you may review our list maintenance reports here: https://www.elections.virginia.gov/resultsreports/maintenance-reports/ There are sections on the list maintenance reports comparing voter registration data with other states. However, nothing is mentioned about duplicates identified, confirmations sent, & voter registrations cancelled on comparing data with other states. There is concern that the RVL is not accurate. Holtzman Vogel’s pre-litigation notice analysis dated August 8, 2023 indicates that 101 VA counties and cities are in violation of Section 8 of the NVRA and ELECT’s response to the pre-litigation notice is not reassuring. Maintaining a complete and accurate RVL is required and is an essential part of the process to ensure that elections are safeguarded, fair and legitimate. Over 10,000 inactive registered voters (RV) were researched. Over 50% appear to have moved out of VA. ELECT's Feb 1, 2024 registration statistics report shows 457,047 inactive RV (7.4% of the RVL). These are voters who have potentially moved and did not respond to their confirmation notice. They will remain inactive for 2 general federal elections unless they vote, update or confirm their information. These appear to have been identified by the NCOA process. No cancellation letters were sent to RV due to out of state surrender of license for 2021, 2022 and most of 2023. License surrender began in October 2023 with 1,717 removed voters for 2023. License surrender is covered in 24.2-427 E, but it does not tell ELECT it shall do it on a monthly basis. A RV can be canceled under this process after sending a confirmation letter to both the new address, as reported by the DMV, and the address at which he most recently registered in VA. ELECT needs to reconcile the RVL with the DMV surrender of license records and send cancellation letters sent to all disqualified RV. VA DMV joined the driver’s license compact (DLC) in 1968, at which time Virginia began capturing surrender license data. Most states belong to the DLC, which requires that the driver’s license held by the applicant from a DLC member state must be surrendered when applying for a VA’s driver’s license or VA ID card. Other concerns with ERIC regard stewardship, maintenance, privacy, & confidentiality of voter information & the controversy surrounding the sharing of data. Please oppose SB606 & hold ELECT accountable for maintaining an accurate RVL.

The League strongly supports SB 606, as we supported Del. Sickles’ companion bill. Virginia was a founding member of ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center. ERIC is hands down the best tool for securely maintaining accurate voter lists. It is managed and directed by its member states, each of which has a seat on the board. ERIC developed sophisticated safeguards that secure and protect all member states’ voter registration information. It informed our Department of Elections of voters who moved to any of 31 other states and the District of Columbia, those who might have voted in more than one state, and those who died. Virginia’s current agreements with other states leave unanswered questions about the security of our voters’ personal information and the quality of the data provided to us. The Commonwealth should rejoin ERIC as soon as possible and encourage all other states that are not current members of ERIC to join or renew their membership.