State Rep. Wes Allen (R-Troy), a candidate for Alabama Secretary of State, on Monday vowed to pull the state’s membership from a George Soros-connected voter registration organization.
Soros, a billionaire currency trader, has a longstanding history of financing progressive organizations and initiatives across the globe. Allen warns that one such organization Soros is financially connected to routinely obtains sensitive information on Alabama voters.
The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) requires its member states to provide a wide-ranging set of data to its centralized database roughly every two months. Information provided to the organization consists of active and inactive voters, and names of individuals in Alabama’s motor vehicle database. A release advised that the data in many cases includes individuals’ dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial social security numbers.
According to Allen, most of ERIC’s membership consists of Democratic-majority states. Should Allen prevail in his bid for secretary of state, he vowed to pull Alabama’s membership on day one.
“On day one, I will withdraw us from membership and participation in ERIC,” declared Allen. “Alabama taxpayers do not want their information provided to a Soros-funded, leftist group like ERIC. I do not believe that most Alabamians know that their information is being provided to this outfit and I don’t think they would approve of the annual $25,000 taxpayer-funded membership fee either.”
Additionally, ERIC’s member states are mandated to provide data on individuals who are nearing voter age. Upon learning of the state’s membership in ERIC, Allen noted that he was dismayed that Alabama would belong to an organization that holds such ties to the leftist financier.
“We should not be providing any information to this Democrat-controlled database but we absolutely should never give the personal information of minors to these people,” Allen asserted. “There is no justification for any state’s involvement in ERIC but the minute I become Secretary of State, Alabama will be out of it for good.”
According to Allen’s campaign, ERIC was established with a grant provided by the Open Society Foundations, a global grantmaking network which actively funds far-left political causes.
The organization was originally managed David Becker, who is a prominent Democrat election lawyer and former Obama administration-era U.S. Department of Justice official. Becker went on to create the Center for Election Innovation and Research, which distributed millions of dollars worth of funds donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to Democrat-majority counties during the 2020 election cycle.
Allen concluded, “I don’t know how Alabama got mixed up with these people but nothing like this will ever happen under my watch if I am elected to serve as Alabama’s next Secretary of State. Soros can take his minions and his database and troll someone else because Alabamians are going to be off limits – permanently.”
Dylan Smith is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
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