Bob Brink: How Conspiracy Theories Harmed Virginia's Election Integrity
This week, Michael and Thomas are joined by Bob Brink, former Chairman of Virginia's State Board of Elections, to discuss the ERIC system-- the Electronic Registration Information Center, which allowed neighboring states to share voter registration information with each other and help prevent voter fraud. Governor Youngkin has pulled Virginia out of ERIC, so what does that mean for elections going forward?
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
I'm Tom Bowman.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast that's making a list and checking it twice.
Thomas Bowman
A list of voters that is to make sure that people like Mark Meadows don't vote in multiple states.
Michael Pope
Virginia is currently part of a group of states that shares information on which voters have moved and which have died.
Thomas Bowman
But now fringe media reports and conspiracy theories have led to a handful of states pulling out of that coalition.
Michael Pope
And we've got the best guest here to help us understand what all this means. He's a former member of the House of Delegates and former chairman of the State Board of Elections, Bob Brink, thanks for joining us.
Bob Brink
Well, thanks for having me, Michael.
Thomas Bowman
All right, Bob, let's get right into it. What exactly is ERIC, and how does it work?
Bob Brink
ERIC is a consortium of states who share data on voter registration. The basic catchphrase for this is "list maintenance," which sounds very mundane and very arcane. But it's one of the most important elements of fair and efficient elections.
Michael Pope
So give us an example of how this might work. The whole point of this is to spotlight potential problems. So like, walk us through an example of how this might actually work in the real world?
Bob Brink
Well, we're up here in northern Virginia; we're bordered by the District of Columbia and by the state of Maryland. We also are bordered by North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and so on. And in all these areas, you have transient populations, where people move back and forth. You also have voters who die, and maintaining the registration list as cleanly as possible is important. So what ERIC does is it was set up about 10 to 15 years ago, with Virginia as one of the founding states under Republican Governor Bob McDonnell. And it provides the State Department of Elections with various data reports on cross-state movers, state movers, and people who are deceased, tied into the Postal Service's National Change of Address system. And so it enables states to be sure that their voter lists are as clean and complete and factual and up to date as possible.
Thomas Bowman
Okay, so every major agency decision tends to have a pretty long head and tail, and there's usually a significant amount of consideration that goes into new policy decisions. So was there open chatter, or was there a movement within the Department of Elections ahead of this announcement that you're aware of?
Bob Brink
Not to the best of my knowledge. List maintenance, as I said, is an important part of the voter integrity process. And so, the General Assembly requires the Department of Elections to submit annual reports on list maintenance. And so the report last September for the previous fiscal year said that "the data quality from the ERIC program is significantly better than other interstate exchange programs and any program that the department could operate in house with existing resources. The ERIC membership costs are less than the cost incurred if the department were required to create and manage an in house program resulting in the same quality of data." That's the report that was submitted last September. So, so I don't know what happened between then and last week. But people are free to speculate.
Michael Pope
Well, one of the things that happened between the founding of ERIC and you mentioned Virginia was one of the founding states, and the governor's decision to withdraw is a series of reports in Gateway Pundit and elsewhere that really cast aspersions on this process that its founder had a financial interest in this and perhaps was making money on the side that it was not to be believed. What do you make of this sort of right-wing media campaign against this coalition of states sharing voter information?
Bob Brink
I don't know what. Well, first of all, I don't spend a lot of time reading Gateway Pundit. But I have seen reports that track what you had to say about it has been a year-long disinformation campaign. And as a matter of fact, it was buttressed by Donald Trump, who, a couple of months ago, called ERIC the terrible voter registration system that pumps the rolls for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up. And he demanded that all Republican governors pull out of ERIC. So I don't know whether this entered into the decision-making process for Virginia to withdraw. But I know that the diminution of ERICs effectiveness is dangerous for the integrity of the voter process.
Thomas Bowman
We should probably pull this back a little bit. Can you explain exactly what it is that covenant Youngkin had done, and what does it mean to pull out of this ERIC system?
Bob Brink
Well, what it means is that Virginia will no longer have the advantage of the kinds of reports that ERIC provides. The data reports that they provide and that Virginia will have to stand up its own kind of jury-rigged system to try to fill in the gaps there. And I have two concerns about that. First of all, it is just the cost. The letter withdrawing Virginia cited the cost of membership in ERIC, but last year, you know what that cost was, $37,644. I think, frankly, that Governor Youngkin probably spends more on dry cleaning his vests than $37,000. On top of that, I'm concerned about the length of time it will take to reach agreements, just with the neighboring states and by law. The Department of Elections is required to share data with the adjoining states when ERIC was founded, from conception to actual real implementation was several years. And I think it's going to take an appreciable amount of time for Virginia to replicate that kind of data sharing, especially since this involves a lot of personal information. And the concerns about data security have only heightened in the past 10 or 15 years.
Michael Pope
So when I asked the governor's office about the reasons for withdrawing from the system, I got a statement from the governor's spokeswoman McCauley Porter, who said this, quote, Virginia withdrew from ERIC because Virginians data was shared with an ERIC-affiliated research organization. She is there referring to a group that was Created by David Becker, who was one of the founders of this coalition. That is a third-party organization called CEIR. So, explain a little bit about this like this. Is this governor's stated reason for your information, the listener's information here to this podcast, assuming that there are voters in Virginia, that your data is being shared with a third party for research purposes, which they objected to? What do you make of that criticism?
Bob Brink
I don't have knowledge of the specifics of it. But I cannot see how this data would have been shared without adequate security and privacy considerations being taken into account?
Michael Pope
Well, let's assume that there may have been privacy considerations, but they weren't good enough for the governor.
Bob Brink
Well, then, then, it's up to the governor to explain more than the bare-bones statement that you got from his spokesperson. Because as I said, the costs, both in time and in resources, of pulling out of ERIC are pretty severe. And so I think that it's incumbent on him to do more explaining,
Thomas Bowman
As far as you're aware, was there any kind of study that suggested that this might be a good move? Usually, we study these types of things. And you also mentioned membership costs. So and I wanted to follow up on that, Bob, because the costs certainly have gone up over the last couple of years, as other states have pulled out do their conspiracy theories. But the cost today was still less than they were when Virginia founded this system under Bob McDonnell. Right. So what is the alternative plan? And is there a viable alternative that you're actually aware of?
Bob Brink
Well, first of all, I'm not aware of any alternative plan. Um, it seems that the action that the governor took to pull us out was pretty precipitous. And so it looks like they're making it up as they go along.
Michael Pope
So there's the statement that we've got from the spokeswoman. So that's one thing about the third-party vendor that they were uncomfortable that ERIC was sharing voter information with this third-party group. So that's, you know, one concern. If you look at the official letter from Susan Beals, there were a bunch of other sorts of clues as to at least the publicly stated reasoning. One is they say ERIC increasingly engages in efforts that are not list maintenance and that the Board of Directors of this organization had rejected some reforms that had been suggested by a subcommittee. That this guy David Becker, that his voice had been elevated over other board members. I mean, this almost seems like board drama here, like a board of directors drama, with this group that the governor wanted Virginia to pull out of this coalition. There was also this letter also referenced significant dues increases for Virginia because the other states had left, so ever since, this right-wing, you know, the campaign has gone on targeting. ERIC, several a handful of states have left that makes it more expensive for the states that are still in it. That was a concern outlined in this letter. And then just overall concerns about stewardship, maintenance, privacy, confidentiality, and voter data. I mean, a lot of that, that I just read there in that list was kind of internal drama about the board of directors of this group. What do you make of those concerns?
Bob Brink
I don't know what to make them. I do know that, that Virginia was represented on the board of ERIC. And so one alternative would have been for Virginia to work in a bipartisan manner with other states to take the lead of, for instance, Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who you've, I imagine you've heard quite a bit of over the past couple of years to try to deal with those concerns. Now, the first one that you mentioned was where they were undertaking activities other than lightless maintenance. Apparently, there is a requirement with ERIC that they encourage registration for individuals who are eligible to vote but who haven't registered to vote, and in some right-wing circles, this kind of sticks in their craw. The idea of actually doing outreach to encourage people to sign up to vote is something that they found objectionable.
Michael Pope
To that point. If you are a viewer of Tucker Carlson on Fox News before it got canceled, and you believe in the great replacement theory, then this idea that ERIC allows election officials to reach out to eligible voters who have not yet registered is probably pretty alarming. Right?
Bob Brink
I would say so now once again, as was the case with the Gateway Pundit; I don't spend and didn't spend a lot of time watching Tucker Carlson, so I can't give you any firsthand perspective on it. But it's clear that keeping the electorate small and predictable is something that's pretty much an article of faith in some circles.
Michael Pope
Trick of the Bryd machine, by the way,
Bob Brink
Yes, yes. I understand that there's a new book out about the Bryd Machine.
Thomas Bowman
Alright, so it's clear that ERIC is more about just voter registration; it's about ensuring everyone who's eligible to vote can exercise their fundamental right in the appropriate place. And obviously, misinformation has done real damage to our democracy, not just in this instance, but over the least since 2015, if not earlier; explain how the long-term impacts of the decision could harm the integrity of our electoral system. And if you're able to look at other states, if you're aware of them, can we see any potential pitfalls that Virginia might now face maintaining accurate voter rolls,
Bob Brink
Given the way Virginia elections are set up, where the actual day-to-day administration is done through 133 local electoral boards and registrars, they rely on the department to maintain a centralized, accurate, complete voter registration list. If that should be diminished. If the quality of that list should be impaired, then we've got a real problem statewide.
Thomas Bowman
What are some ways that lists could be impaired?
Bob Brink
One of the primary ones is the interstate aspect of it. You and I, up here in Northern Virginia, know how transient people are in this area. They move not only from the district to Virginia, from Maryland to Virginia, from Virginia to Maryland, and so on. But within from Arlington, Alexandria to Fairfax, Prince William, and so on. It's a really tough job for registrars to maintain accurate voter lists. And if they don't have the tool that ERIC provided to maintain an accurate, centralized voter registration list, then their task is going to be much more difficult. And their task is pretty difficult as it is right now.
Thomas Bowman
Let's pivot to the future. This is something that a later administration in Virginia is going to have to fix, most likely. So what opportunities do you see to reform these positions so that they're less at risk of political whims?
Bob Brink
Let me start out by saying that I served with two different commissioners of elections appointed by two governors of two different political parties, and both Chris Piper and Susan Beals were exemplary in running the department in a very professional and nonpartisan way. But this action on ERIC is a very, very troubling sign. I think that it would; a couple of things are worth looking at. One of them is something that Governor Youngkin actually supported early on before he peremptorily fired Chris Piper, and that is to establish a nonpolitical appointment process for the head of the department. I think that's something that's worth looking at now because there is a danger, given Governor Youngkin's predilections toward following national right-wing winds, that we should look at that. And second, I think that we also have to look at the governance structure for our election system. Overall, I'm very concerned about local electoral boards. As it is right now, the local electoral boards are appointed by local circuit judges on recommendations from the local political parties, from the majority party, one from the minority; you may have seen news reports of what's been going on down in Buckingham County, which is, since this is a PG-rated show, I'll call it a clown show rather than other things. But I'm concerned that the local parties, as well as the local circuit court judges, need to be aware of the gravity of the appointments that are made to local electoral boards because that's really where the local administration happens.
Thomas Bowman
So move more of the authority to local boards and bureaucratize. Agency, rather than making it subject to political whims, there are some obvious starting points. And Bob, I also want to return briefly to the role of misinformation and all of this because, as we know, misinformation can do real damage to our democracy. And we've got to be basing these decisions about election integrity on facts and not conspiracy theories. And all reports suggest that Susan Beals has actually been earnest in trying to administer these elections fairly. But this action, the specific action to withdraw from ERIC, contradicts those observations. But I would note she's human as the rest of us and therefore vulnerable to misinformation. And it suggests to me, perhaps, that bad inputs lead to bad outputs, even when you're the Commissioner of Elections. How would you characterize the risk of misinformation inside the Department of Elections? And what are some ways without needing to reform in the short term that someone like Susan could overcome that inputs?
Bob Brink
Leaving the commissioner out of this. Because as I said, my experience working with her and her administration of the department was nothing but one of confidence and trust. I think the overall ERIC story over the past year shows what can happen when you have a drumbeat of misinformation on a susceptible population, which is to say, Republicans across the nation. There the way that ERIC has been characterized, the way that the actions of ERIC's board and of individuals who served on that board have been characterized, shows that what you can end up with is a deterioration of a strong and viable election system. And it's almost as if these people are trying to guarantee that Eric will fail. But you know, to kind of send it into a death spiral. It has served and serves a vital function, and in to diminish it by encouraging or forcing, or in the case of Donald Trump demanding that states withdraw from it, causes serious long-term damage to our elections.
Thomas Bowman
I want to follow up on something you just said right now. If ERIC makes our elections more secure and provides integrity, why would anybody want EROC to fail?
Bob Brink
Well, there are forces in our politics right now that thrive on chaos. And if you can set up a system where that was the effectiveness and perception of the solidity of a system is called into question, then you feed that chaos.
Thomas Bowman
Before we go. Chairman Brink, Is there anything else you wanted to highlight or mention?
Bob Brink
As you mentioned going in, I served in and around Capitol Square for about 25 years; it was tremendously rewarding. All the positions that I held there were tremendously rewarding. And I have to say a lot of fun. But the one that was the most important in my mind was serving on the state board of elections because nothing is more important to us and to our future than the integrity of our election system.
Thomas Bowman
I will let's leave it there. Former Chairman of the Department of Elections. Bob Brink. Thank you again for joining us on Pod Virginia.
Bob Brink
Well, thank you for having me.
