ERIC Investigation, Part 3: Soros Open Society and the Founding of the Nation’s Largest Voter Roll Clean-Up Operation

By Jim Hoft
Published January 24, 2022 at 8:00am

Last Thursday The Gateway Pundit revealed Democrats and leftists have fought ferociously to prevent the cleanup of State voter registration rolls. Recognizing a potential niche, left-wing activists created ERIC to clean voter rolls their way, using their rules. So in 2012 the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was formed as a membership organization primarily for blue States. ERIC is essentially a left wing voter registration drive disguised as voter roll clean up. But it’s been gaining traction in Red States too. Originally funded by the Soros Open Society, it is now responsible for cleaning the voter rolls in 31 States, plus D.C. A top election official from each member State is appointed a seat on the ERIC Board or as an Officer, all unpaid positions.

On Friday we reported on how ERIC is working — The Largest U.S. Counties Removed Only ZERO to TWO Ineligible Voters From Their Voter Rolls the Last 4 Years

Today we will focus on ERIC and its connections to Soros and far left organizations.

Democrats have been moving us rapidly towards a centralized interstate voter registration database. In the 90’s there were over 3,000 separate county databases. The 2002 HAVA act, pushed by Democrats, required each state create ONE database. We moved to having only 50 databases of voters. Granted, some counties were allowed to keep their old systems. But they must share all data with their states authorized system. Then came ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center created in 2012. This non-profit venture was to help clean voter rolls. It now has 31 member States under contract who share ALL voter and MVD data with ERIC, close to 300 million records now. The deployment of ERIC, plus the 19 holdout states, leave us with 20 databases covering the entirety of America’s elections.

The Pew Center on the States was a research program of the left leaning Pew Charitable Trusts. It was in place from 2007 until 2012, headed by Susan Urahn, who is now CEO over all of Pew’s $6 billion in assets. David Becker worked in the DOJ Civil Rights Voting Section from 1998 until 2005. He then worked for People For the American Way until 2007, a hard left organization focused on shutting down conservatism. In 2008, Becker became the Director of Election Initiatives at Pew. Becker & Pew built the media sensation around voter registration, the legal framework of ERIC, while Jeff Jonas from IBM built the software technology.

Soros OSI US Programs Budget 2011 – 2012

Pew was instrumental in getting ERIC off the ground, sponsoring a 42 member workgroup on voter registration improvements in 2009. Washington state Co-Director of Elections Shane Hamlin and Kim Wyman, then the Thurston County (WA) auditor, were part of that group. In 2012 Wyman became Secretary of State for Washington. The original funding of ERIC came from an “anonymous donor” and Pew Center On The States, who received grants from the Transparency & Integrity Fund of George Soros Open Society. But the leftist founders realized ERIC would not survive partisan politics. So the project transitioned to be fully funded by its member states. Funding documents can be found in these Soros Wayback Archives, under USA tab.

Soros US Programs Key Grantees

Soros Strategic Activities Fund

Kim Wyman, a “Big Lie” RINO was an advocate of ERIC even before she became SOS in 2012. She was then selected by Soros funded Aspen Institute in 2013 to their Rodel Fellowship, their liberal leadership training program. Since 2012, Wyman and Hamlin have run Washington’s 100% mail in ballot elections, with many controversies along way. In October 2021 Biden offered Wyman the position of Senior Election Security lead at CISA, replacing Krebs who was fired by Trump, and she took it. Shane Hamlin was the original Chairman of ERIC, and is now the Executive Director, still serving as the Co-Director of Elections for Washington.

Now retired, John Lindback was the first Executive Director of ERIC. He was also the Senior Officer in Elections Initiatives at Pew, and part of the original 2009 workgroup. He later worked as Senior Advisor for the left leaning CSME, a subsidiary of Soros funded dark money group New Venture Fund. CSME was closely aligned with CTCL (Zuck $$$). Previously, Linback was the Director of Elections in Oregon for SOS Bradbury (D). He had a seat on the EAC Board, and was President of the controversial NASED. Edgardo Cortés was Chairman of ERIC, and Chairman at the EAC’s Standards Board. He is now an advisor to the Election Security team at the Soros funded Brennan Center.

In July 2011, ERIC’s UVR design was presented to California officials by Shane Hamlin (WA), IBM IT Architect Jeff Butcher, Pam Smith from Verified Voting, and Jim Dempsey from Soros funded (CDT) Center for Democracy and Technology. Due to Democrat infighting, the CA AB2344 bill to add ERIC to their election laws never made it, CA never joined ERIC. On February 14th, 2012 Pew Center On The States released statements and a full study about “Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient” voter rolls. This started the liberal push for states to join ERIC, and paperless voter registration. Academia across the country helped these liberals. From CalTech, MIT, University of Washington, UC Berkley, ACLU, and many more published papers about VotReg issues.

Throughout 2012 VotReg articles appeared in NPR, NYT, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Politico, Huffington Post, and so on. ERIC was presented to the National Council on State Legislatures by Becker. In May of 2013, by executive order, Obama created the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. It included his personal attorney (Bob Baeur), Director of Elections for Michigan (Thomas), and the Clark County Registrar (Lomax) known for the ACORN registration scam. It also included Mitt Romney’s campaign attorney (Ginsberg), and Tammy Patrick from Maricopa County Elections Compliance. She now works at the Soros partnered Democracy Fund.

Becker and Hamlin presented ERIC to this Commission, stating it will “empower states to get lists of new citizens who do not appear registered to vote”. As expected, the commission’s final report recommended all states join ERIC. In June 2013 Becker and IBM’s Jonas presented ERIC at IBM Edge, their annual user conference with 5,000 attendees. In 2014 the Senate Rules Committee, headed by Chuck Schumer, held 3 hearings to expand voter registration and push ERIC. After these promotions, states started joined ERIC. But somehow our voter rolls never got very clean.

In 2020 Judicial Watch found 29 states had huge registration excesses. In 8 states, if you combined all counties, their average registration for the entire State exceeded 100%. Seven of the 8 are long time members of ERIC (Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Vermont). In fact, Wyman’s own Washington had 14 of 39 counties exceeding 100%. Colorado, a huge proponent and also 8 year member of ERIC, had 40 of 64 counties exceeding 100%. They were sued by Judicial Watch for this election fraud.

So who’s in control of ERIC, and what’ really going on here.? IBM’s Jeff Jonas and Jeff Butcher who both designed ERIC’s technology went on to co-found Senzing in 2016. This is the data matching AI that runs ERIC. In a 2018 NYT interview, Jonas says “ERIC has a 2 person staff, one tends to the constantly growing database”. Senzing manages the evolution of the AIR, but has no headquarters. Their 20 full time employees work from wherever they please. In 2018 Jonas went “full nomad” and became an extreme minimalist, selling his belongings and living out of a duffle. Jonas donates to Democrats: Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Obama for America, and Bernie Sanders to name a few.

Ericka Haas is the System Engineer at ERIC, for 9 years now. She previously worked in the Oregon Secretary of State’s office with Lindback. In February 2018, DHS created the Elections Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (SCC). Haas shares a seat on this council with staff from Dominion, ES&S, Smartmatic, and Unisyn Voting. SCC represents 30 companies responsible for providing key components to our elections, including public policy. The SCC group rubs noses with GCC council, which includes CISA, EAC, NASS, NASED. This insider bootlicking and glad handing is the result of former DHS Director Jeh Johnson declaring our elections “critical infrastructure”.

David Becker, the lead driver of ERIC, is truly a scoundrel. In 2016 he founded CEIR. He distributed $69.5 mil in Zuckerberg money in 2020, aligned with CTCL. While at the DOJ, Becker was reported to OPR (ethics). Brad Scholzman, head of DOJ Civil Rights Division stated, “It’s the most unethical thing I’ve ever seen. He’s a hard core leftist who couldn’t stand conservatives. Emails revealed nasty, disparaging remarks about Republicans…unethical and unprofessional”. In 2020 Becker’s CEIR gave $20mil to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s personal non profit (MCELA). She then directed $11.8mil to two Democrat PR firms. TGP reported how Becker founded the (EOLDN) to help election officials with lawyers who would fend off legitimate claims of election fraud.

In 2013 RTI International provided their Stage 1 Evaluation of ERIC members states. After giving tens of millions of voter records to this ERIC non profit, the initial 7 states (Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, Utah, Virginia) found a measly .8% increase in voter registrations. Stage 2 evaluation was not made public.

Soros Budget and Programs Strategy