ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida is the latest state to join the multi-state voter registration organization called ERIC, which allows states to compare information with the aim of identifying duplicate voter registrations.

The announcement was made by Gov. Ron DeSantis at the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office on Wednesday afternoon.

With dozens of supervisors of elections statewide, DeSantis said Florida will now be the 29th state to use the program ERIC. Washington, D.C. is also part of the program.

The state legislature had voted unanimously last year to allow Florida to join the nonprofit ERIC, which stands for Electronic Registration Information Center.

The goal of the organization is to cross-reference voter rolls to identify dual registrations, such as registered voters who might have moved between states, or voters who may have died, so that the member states can clean up their voter rolls.

"We have a lot of people move into this state, so I think this will keep the voter rolls accurate," DeSantis said.

DeSantis said ERIC will enhance the statewide voter database and will also help bolster public confidence in elections after the FBI backed up a finding in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation that Russians tried to hack into the voter databases of two Florida counties during the 2016 election cycle. 

The governor anticipates it will initially cost about $1.3 million to get mailers out to unregistered voters with the help of ERIC.

Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles said he appreciates that DeSantis is trying to get the state to pay for the mailers.

"He's committed to the state funding the mailers rather than putting it on the 67 counties, so hopefully we will be uniform,” Cowles said.

More than two dozen other states, plus the District of Columbia, have joined ERIC. DeSantis said he hopes to have the ERIC implemented by the November 2020 election.

The mailer that will go out initially to unregistered voters will only be mailed to you once. The next time the state does a mailing, which would then be in 2022 for the next federal election, the mailer will then only be sent to unregistered voters who either have moved to the state or are eligible to vote for the first time.