An election integrity legal group is asking President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice to investigate the Oregon secretary of state’s alleged mishandling of records from a leftist voter registration network.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation sued Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat, last month for allegedly destroying records from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) indicating which voters have been wrongfully removed from the rolls, as The Federalist reported at the time. PILF sent a complaint to Leo Terrell — Trump’s senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights — on Thursday.
“Oregon officials do not retain monthly alerts from the Electronic Registration Information Center (‘ERIC’) relating to registrants who were previously and inaccurately flagged as deceased,” wrote Logan Churchwell, PILF’s research director, in the complaint that he shared with The Federalist.
ERIC is an elections database that supposedly helps member states clean their voter rolls, but it has close left-wing ties, as The Federalist has reported in the past. In Virginia, the group labeled dead voters “eligible but unregistered.”
ERIC issues “deceased retractions” reports to member states, listing voters the database wrongfully flagged as dead, according to a press release from PILF. The legal group has been requesting “deceased retractions” reports “throughout 2023 and 2024.”
But in spring 2024, when Churchwell asked the Oregon secretary of state’s office for “deceased retractions” reports from ERIC, a public records analyst said that, though the office receives the reports monthly, “We do not download and retain the data.”
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, however, requires states to keep “all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters” for two years. The Civil Rights Act of 1960 also requires election officials to “retain and preserve” voter roll maintenance documents for 22 months and produce them “upon demand.”
So far, PILF has collected “deceased retractions” reports — some going back to 2013 — from seven ERIC member states without any legal action. The files include names, registration dates, and “unique voter ID numbers.”
ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin told all member states on Nov. 7, 2023, that “deceased retractions could potentially be shielded under state laws” from PILF’s record requests, according to the complaint.
From PILF’s latest data, 55 percent of registrants that ERIC erroneously categorized as deceased were already removed from voter rolls before “deceased retractions” reports went out, Churchwell wrote in the complaint. So, the “deceased retractions” reports help indicate “registrants who were removed improperly based on ERIC data.”
“Given all the above facts and analysis, the Foundation believes federal investigation within this specific statutory lens is warranted,” the complaint reads, referencing the legal requirement for document retention.
PILF was “appreciative of the speedy confirmation of receipt by the Voting Section” of the DOJ, Churchwell told The Federalist.
“It’s important that we are able to study patterns between ERIC’s Deceased Reports, Oregon’s reliance upon them, and the elapsed time before a Retraction,” Churchwell said. “Missing public records are a basic misinformation risk to all.”
According to InfluenceWatch, ERIC’s founder is “hardcore leftist” David Becker — who also founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), which funneled millions in “Zuckbucks” to election officials in 2020 to boost Democrat turnout.
In September, Oregon officials found the state DMV’s “motor voter system” had registered more than 300 noncitizens to vote since 2021. Democrat Gov. Tina Kotek and then-Secretary of State Lavonne Griffin-Valade ordered limited audits of the issue, finding more than 1,500 potentially ineligible registered voters. As The Federalist previously reported, between June 2021 and October 2024, the Oregon DMV processed more than 54,600 registrations for voters of “unknown citizenship.”
Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He is a spring 2025 fellow of The College Fix. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.
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