As Congress fast-tracks the SAVE Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, lawmakers in Maine are looking to remedy another challenge to election integrity by cutting down on the possibility of people being registered in more than one state or jurisdiction at a time by cross-checking the state’s voter rolls with those of other states.
Although this bill is primarily supported by Republican legislators, one Democratic representative has signed on a cosponsor.
LD 1431 would give the Secretary of State’s Office the authority to create an “interstate voter registration cross-check program” in cooperation with other states and jurisdictions to “routinely exchange public voter registration lists with other [places] to compare voters and voter histories.”
To accomplish this, the Secretary of State would be allowed to contract with a “private sector data system.”
The Secretary of State’s Office would need to “record” all voter registration maintenance activity conducted as a result of the program, submitting it to the Legislature by the first day of each quarter of the fiscal year.
The legislation also includes “voter data privacy protections” that bar the Secretary of State from recording or disclosing “information or personally identifying data.”
Contractors hired to carry out the program may not ask the Secretary of State to do anything or disclose any data that the Office is not otherwise authorized to do.
Costs to carry out voter roll maintenance under this program may not exceed the funds already allocated to the Secretary of State for the maintenance of voter registration, the bill’s language stipulates.
The primary sponsor of LD 1431, Rep. Barbara A. Bagshaw (R-Windham), was joined on this legislation by Sen. Jim Libby (R-Cumberland), Rep. David W. Boyer Jr. (R-Poland), Rep. Marygrace Caroline Cimino (R-Bridgton), Rep. Kimberly M. Haggan (R-Hampden), Rep. Allison Hepler (D-Woolwich), Rep. Michael J. Lance (R-Paris), Assistant Minority Leader Katrina J. Smith (R-Palermo), Sen. Joseph Martin (R-Oxford), and Senate Republican Minority Leader Sen. Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook).
A public hearing for this bill, hosted by the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee, has been scheduled for Wednesday, April 16 at 10am in Room 437 of the State House.
Written testimony may also be submitted online at www.mainelegislature.org/testimony.
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This is not the first time that a state has attempted to implement an interstate cross check program in order to improve the accuracy of voter registration rolls.
Back in 2005, Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh developed Crosscheck in collaboration with Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska for the purpose of identifying citizens who may have been registered to vote in multiple states simultaneously.
Over time, a number of other states joined the program, reaching a height of 25 states in 2017 according to official documents.
The program was suspended in 2019, however, as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over allegations concerning the improper disclosure of sensitive personal information.
It was also alleged in the lawsuit that the program had a high error rate and that potential matches were exchanged between state officials using unsecured emails.
Due to the earlier discovery of potential security vulnerabilities as part of a Homeland Security audit, the program has not been operational since 2017.
Prior to this, eight states — including Florida, Alaska, Kentucky, Washington, Oregon, New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts — had already left the program on their own, citing similar concerns.
Still active today, however, is the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a non-profit organization that was founded to “help election officials maintain more accurate voter rolls and detect possible illegal voting.”
ERIC also says on its website that it helps “states reach out to potentially eligible but not yet registered individuals with information on how best to register to vote.”
That said, the organization has drawn criticism in recent years as questions surrounding its motivations have been raised. This ultimately prompted several Republican states to withdraw from the program entirely.
President Donald Trump (R) has previously called out ERIC on social media, alleging that it is a “terrible Voter Registration System that ’pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up.”
Currently, twenty-four states — including Maine — and Washington DC are members of ERIC.
As of February 2025, Georgia had begun debating whether or not to become the tenth Republican-led state to leave the organization. No state has formally withdrawn from the organization since October 2023.
Rep. Martin Momtahan — the Georgia GOP representative who introduced the bill that would take his state out of the program — explained that other states’ decision to leave ERIC has made the program “totally ineffective.”
According to ERIC’s website, member states routinely submit Voter Registration Data and licensing and identification data from motor vehicle departments (MVD Data) through a “secure process.”
ERIC is also authorized to use official death data from the Social Security Administration.
These reports are then combined using matching software that identifies voters who may have duplicitous or invalid registrations.
As of March 31, 2025, ERIC reports that it has identified 13.5 million cross-state movers, 28.8 million in-state movers, 1.3 million in-state duplicates, and over 638,000 deceased registrants.
Year-to-year data reveals, however, that identifications made a steep drop in 2024 following the widespread withdrawals.
For example, the number of cross-state movers found decreased from 1.5 million in 2023 to about 700,000 in 2024, and the number of in-state movers identified dropped from 4 million in 2023 to 1.4 million in 2024.
That said, the number of in-state duplicates identified during this period nearly doubled, increasing from 108,000 to 203,000. There was not a significant change in the number of deceased individuals found to be on the voter rolls, with 33,000 found in 2023 and 28,000 found in 2024.
After withdrawing from the program, some of these Republican-led states have begun to undertake efforts to create their own interstate voter registration cross-check programs.
For example, shortly after pulling out of ERIC, Alabama launched the Alabama Voter Integrity Database (AVID), which allows the state to identify voters who have moved but maintained outdated registrations by comparing the state’s voter rolls with national databases and information from partner states.
Louisiana has also recently begun sharing voter registration data with Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi in the name of reducing duplicate registrations.
“Election integrity is my highest priority as Louisiana’s Secretary of State,” Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry said in a press release. “These agreements underscore how focused my office is on maintaining safe and secure elections, while also safeguarding voters’ sensitive data.”
Based on the text of the bill recently introduced in Maine to authorize the Secretary of State’s Office to develop its own program to “collaborate and cross-check voter registration data with other states,” it is not immediately clear how such a program could potentially interact with or complement the state’s pre-exisiting efforts to maintain the voter rolls.
The bill’s text also does not specify what specific sources or databases would be used to identify duplicitous and invalid registrations, as the proposed language appears to give the Secretary of State’s Office a great deal of leeway in terms of deciding the specifics of any potential program.
The development of a good voter registration program sounds like a great idea however we need to get rid of shenna bellows first and foremost. Because nothing good for the people of Maine will become of it if she is setting at the controls.
ERIC is a total scam. It needs to go