First to leave was Louisiana, followed by Alabama.
Then, in one fell swoop, Florida, Missouri and West Virginia announced on Monday that they would drop out of a bipartisan network of about 30 states that helps maintain accurate voter rolls, one that has faced intensifying attacks from election deniers and right-wing media.
Ohio may not be far behind, according to a letter sent to the group Monday from the state’s chief election official, Frank LaRose. Mr. LaRose and his counterparts in the five states that left the group are all Republicans.
For more than a year, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization known as ERIC, has been hit with false claims from allies of former President Donald J. Trump who say it is a voter registration vehicle for Democrats that received money from George Soros, the liberal billionaire and philanthropist, when it was created in 2012.
Mr. Trump even chimed in on Monday, urging all Republican governors to sever ties with the group, baselessly claiming in a Truth Social media post that it “pumps the rolls” for Democrats.
The Republicans who announced their states were leaving the group cited complaints about governance issues, chiefly that it mails newly eligible voters who have not registered ahead of federal elections. They also accused the group of opening itself up to a partisan influence.
In an interview on Tuesday, Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who is Missouri’s secretary of state, said that the group had balked at his state’s calls for reforms, some of which were expected to be weighed by the group’s board of directors at a meeting on March 17. He denied that the decision to pull out was fueled by what the organization and its defenders have described as a right-wing smear campaign.
“It’s not like I was antagonistic toward cleaning our voter rolls,” Mr. Ashcroft said.
Shane Hamlin, the group’s executive director, did not comment about particular complaints of the states in an email on Tuesday, but referred to an open letter that he wrote on March 2 saying that the organization had been the subject of substantial misinformation regarding the nature of its work and who has access to voter lists….
Mr. LaRose, in Ohio, also had a stark shift in tone: After recently describing the group to reporters as imperfect but still “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” by Monday he was also calling for reforms and put the group on notice.
“Anything short of the reforms mentioned above will result in action up to and including our withdrawal from membership,” Mr. LaRose wrote. “I implore you to do the right thing.”
The complaints about partisanship seem centered on David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped develop the group and is a nonvoting board member. Mr. Ashcroft said he didn’t think that Mr. Becker, a former director of the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts who has vocally debunked election fraud claims, including disputing Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, should be on the board.
Mr. Becker is the founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, another nonpartisan group that has been attacked by election deniers.