![]() Hughes, who attended almost every single one of the virtual meetings, filed legislation with their suggestions as Senate Bill 1070 in February. Vera announced during a January meeting of the task force that they had submitted the draft of such a bill to Hughes’ staff for review. Dashiell and Vera did not respond to Votebeat’s requests for comment or to emailed questions about how the effort would improve elections in Texas. Myers declined to comment for this story. Shortly after, the group’s ERIC task force - led by Alan Vera, the current Harris County Republican Party ballot security chairman, and Dana Myers, the Texas Republican Party vice-chair - began drafting legislation. Dashiell, the Republican national committeewoman for Texas, organizes the meetings and refers to them as “TAD Talks.” “We want to be able to do something and we have a senator that’s willing to help change that or add language or improve or reform ERIC,” said Toni Anne Dashiell last August, referring to Sen. Nonetheless, the activists moved forward with an effort that experts say is set to undermine one of the best election integrity tools available to Texas and other states to prevent election fraud. Keith Ingram, the elections director for the secretary of state’s office, told the group the program was the only option available to ensure voters aren’t registered or voting in more than one state at the same time. The bills were introduced despite the efforts of Texas’s elections director, who attended a meeting and offered factual information related to their concerns last April, apparently without success. ![]() Now, lawmakers who regularly attend those meetings have introduced legislation written by the group that would end Texas’s participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC. The majority of their grievances - that it is run by left-wing voter registration activists and funded by George Soros, among other things - were pulled straight from a far-right conspiracy website and are baseless. In virtual meetings taking place over a year, right-wing activists and Republican legislators have stoked concern over a multistate coalition that Texas and more than 30 other states use to help clean voter rolls. ![]() Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
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