Zach Montellaro for Politico:

Swing state voters broadly rejected candidates in last year’s midterms who questioned the results of the 2020 elections. But unfounded accusations of fraud and other malfeasance continue to tear at the machinery of U.S. elections.

The latest example comes from Alabama and its newly elected secretary of state, Wes Allen. His first official act upon taking office earlier this month was unusual: The Republican fulfilled a campaign promise by withdrawing Alabama from an obscure interstate compact that helps states maintain voter rolls, citing data security concerns.

That consortium — known as Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC — has been a genuine bipartisan success story, finding buy-in from red states like Florida and Texas and blue states like Colorado and Connecticut to help them remove duplicate voter registrations and catch potential instances of double voting.

But conservative conspiracy sites like The Gateway Pundit and the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit that filed lawsuits that unsuccessfully sought to overturn the 2020 election, have attacked ERIC as part of a liberal plot to control the underpinnings of American elections.

Allen’s abandonment of ERIC illustrates how ideas stemming from the falsehood of a stolen presidential election remain in the bloodstream of the American democratic system, even after its most well-known proponents were shut out from winning key positions in major swing states in the midterms.

It also suggests the era of bipartisan, behind-the-scenes, mundane cooperation on the mechanics of running elections is at risk.