- Rep. Karianne Lisonbee introduced a bill that would make Utah the 10th Republican-leaning state to abandon the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC.
- The bill requires the Lieutenant Governor's Office to publish updated voter registration totals multiple times during the election cycle.
- This is one of more than a dozen election reforms proposed by Utah lawmakers in the 2025 legislative session.
Utah lawmakers expanded their response to recent election audits with the release of a bill that would overhaul how the Lieutenant Governor’s Office oversees voter roll cleanup.
House Majority Whip Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, unveiled the new legislation Monday morning which would require the state to end its contract with the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, by July 6, and lists requirements for obtaining another third-party contractor.
The bill would also instruct the Lieutenant Governor’s Office to publish updated voter registration totals on its website multiple times a year, report annually to the Legislature on its efforts to maintain the accuracy of voter rolls, and ensure that voter rolls are compared to death certificate information 90 days before every even-year election.
“The No. 1 goal with this bill is to make sure that we’re actually cleaning our voter rolls,” Lisonbee said in an interview with the Deseret News.
What is ERIC?
If the bill passes, Utah would become the 10th Republican-leaning state in three years to leave the voter roll management system known as ERIC since allegations emerged on rightwing websites in 2022 that the organization was misusing voter data to increase voter registration among likely Democrats.
ERIC was formed in 2012 as a nonprofit group to help member states coordinate voter registration data and update voter rolls in an effort to prevent voters from casting ballots in multiple states.
Since Utah became a founding member of ERIC, the group has identified over 675,000 records for county clerks to review and update, including over 6,000 deceased individuals on voter rolls and 76 individuals who appeared to vote in multiple states in 2022, according to an April 2024 statement from the Lieutenant Governor’s Office.
Last year, some Utah Republican delegates called on Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson to end the state’s contract with ERIC out of concern that the group was biased and violated voter privacy.
In a post on X, Henderson said ERIC has become “a favorite boogeyman of the radical election deniers. But their claims are not based in fact, and their demands are counterproductive to their rhetoric.”
“It rings hollow for anyone to claim to care about the security and integrity of our elections while simultaneously demanding we withdraw from the best tool we have to keep our voter rolls clean,” Henderson said.
ERIC is the only system that allows Utah to know who voted in the group’s 23 other member states and Washington, D.C., and also helps the elections office to spot duplicate or out-of-date records.
However, seven states have recently signed memorandums of understanding with the election officials of Alabama, which formed its own “voter integrity database” in 2023 after leaving the ERIC consortium.
Lisonbee’s bill would require the alternative third-party contractor, which could include a private company or another state authorized by the Legislature, to:
- Use industry standard security measures to protect records.
- Specialize in voter registration maintenance.
- Use voter registration data for no other reason than maintaining the accuracy of the database.
- Use data encryption to secure election records.
- Dispose of data according to an approved retention schedule.
The third-party contractor would be required to notify the Lieutenant Governor’s Office of any inappropriate voter registration. County clerks would then have seven days to send a notice to the potentially ineligible voter and remove or update the voter’s name on the official register.
The state’s ERIC membership fee in 2024 was $49,084. The state’s contract with ERIC was renewed in 2023 with an exemption to ERIC’s “Eligible but Unregistered” program that requires member states to contact potential voters who are not registered.
State code does not currently give the Lieutenant Governor’s Office the authority to contract voter roll management to third parties, Lisonbee said. Her bill would change that but she said this lack of statutory permission is worrying.
“It was not authorized, and so I think the entire contract is in question for that reason, so that’s why I’m making sure that we’re putting proper protections in place,” Lisonbee said.
What did recent audits find?
Following the results of an audit by the Legislative Auditor General’s Office, Lisonbee said it has become clear that an alternative to ERIC is needed.
“It’s just not a very effective third-party at identifying people who shouldn’t be on the rolls,” Lisonbee said.
An audit released in early December identified 1,400 deceased voters who were still on Utah voter rolls. Half of the deceased individuals were still marked as “active” registered voters and would have received a ballot in recent elections.
Of these 700 deceased individuals, two of them cast ballots in the November 2023 election and hundreds had been on Utah voter rolls for over a year.
The audit also found 300 duplicate records and 450 records where multiple people were apparently registered using the same driver’s license number. Ballots from each of these categories were cast inappropriately in recent election cycles, the audit said.
“I’ve known for a long time that there’s a mess in the voter rolls and I tried to notify the clerk,” Lisonbee said. “And we don’t have a good process in place to do that.”
But an updated process can only go so far if county clerks, who have been inundated with election reforms in recent years, are unable to keep up with all the changes.
The legislative audit also found a lack of compliance among county clerks in conducting post-election audits, ensuring adequate surveillance and maintaining proper ballot controls.
Of the 29 county election offices, 17 failed to conduct proper post-election audits of ballot images and cast vote records during at least one election during the last two years, and one quarter of counties failed to ensure sufficient camera monitoring, the audit found.
“It doesn’t really matter who the lieutenant governor is, it’s about getting the right policy in place to make sure the elections office is functioning optimally,” Lisonbee said.
How are lawmakers addressing election integrity?
The “spirit” of Lisonbee’s bill is “to increase transparency for voters,” she said.
It would require the Lieutenant Governor’s Office to publish the updated total number of registered voters in the state, separated by active voters and inactive voters, at the start of the candidate filing period, at the deadline for voter registration for every election and at the time of a statewide canvass following each regular general election.
The office would be required to publish the number of potential ineligible voters, determined by a third-party contractor, no later than three weeks after the start of the candidate filing period and no later than three weeks after a general election canvass.
The bill also outlines in greater detail that election officers are required to video monitor all ballots continuously during ballot intake, signature verification, ballot scanning, ballot sorting, ballot preparation and ballot storage.
Lisonbee’s bill joins a package of more than a dozen bills that would change how Utahns vote.
The proposals range from overhauling how candidates qualify for primary elections to transforming mail-in voting into an opt-in-only system.
One of the most significant bills, HB300, which enjoys the support of Lisonbee and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, would require that after a ballot is mailed to a voter, it is returned to poll workers, in person with voter ID.