Jeff Ogg receives a ballot Monday, May 16, 2022, at a drive-up Marion County ballot drop site in Salem. (Ron Cooper/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Oregon’s governor and top elections official are calling for an independent external audit of the state’s automatic voter registration system after the Motor Vehicles Services Division found another 302 people were incorrectly registered to vote.
The latest numbers, included in an “after-action” report Gov. Tina Kotek requested from the DMV, join an earlier 1,259 people who were registered to vote despite not providing proof of citizenship when they obtained driver’s licenses. At least 10 of those individuals voted, though election officials have since determined that at least five of those 10 were citizens when they voted.
The growing number is still a minute fraction of the more than 3 million registered voters in Oregon, but it prompted Kotek and Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, who she appointed last year, to call for a fuller investigation. Both women are Democrats, and Republicans in the state Legislature have been calling for more investigations for weeks.
Kotek also directed the DMV to pause sending voter data to the Secretary of State’s Office until a data integrity review is completed by the end of the year.
“Any error that undermines our voting system must be taken incredibly seriously and addressed,” Kotek said in a statement. “Given the findings in the Oregon DMV’s after-action report, an immediate, external audit of the Oregon Motor Voter program and a pause to data transmission between the Oregon DMV and SoS are imperative steps to ensuring the program can operate with integrity and accuracy into the future.”
While state and local election officials previously expressed confidence that none of the incorrectly registered voters would receive ballots, a press release from the Secretary of State’s Office on Monday said it can’t guarantee that the 302 ballots will be removed before county clerks start mailing ballots next week. The office has directed counties to flag those ballots, so if they’re returned they can be removed and not tallied unless the voter demonstrates eligibility.
“Thanks to the swift action of elections officials, I have full confidence that these new errors will not impact the 2024 election,” Griffin-Valade said in a statement. “The DMV’s after-action report raises serious concerns about this important part of our voter registration system. The first step in restoring the public’s trust in Motor Voter is a transparent review by a neutral third party operating under strict government auditing standards.”
New staff position
Griffin-Valade said she has instructed her office’s Elections Division to hire an employee to oversee automatic voter registration and ensure that partner agencies are following all policies and procedures. Along with the DMV, Oregon lawmakers passed a law in 2023 to automatically register Medicaid recipients to vote, but it can’t take effect until the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services agrees.
More than half of the 302 newly identified people who were incorrectly registered to vote are citizens of the U.S. territories of American Samoa and Swains Island. They can obtain U.S. passports and are allowed to vote in party presidential nominating elections, but they’re not U.S. citizens and can’t vote in other elections.
Another 123 incorrectly registered voters were subject to the same clerical error that caused the original 1,259 erroneous registrations: DMV staff misidentifying a foreign passport or foreign birth certificate as a U.S. passport or birth certificate. And one record was caught by DMV’s newly implemented reviews, but not until after that individual’s information was sent to the Secretary of State’s Office.
“Two weeks ago, we believed we had all of the information to project confidence that we understood and had reviewed all records at risk of error,” DMV Administrator Amy Joyce said. “We have since learned this confidence was misplaced based on new information outlined in this announcement and after-action report and for this, we are sorry.”
Tobias Read, the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, promised in a statement that he would investigate the issue further if the newly announced audit didn’t suffice.
“I am encouraged that these revelations are finally receiving the scrutiny they demand,” he said. “Oregonians deserve a thorough investigation of the automatic voter registration program’s implementation, as well as accountability at both the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Secretary of State’s Office. If that is not achieved by this investigation, I can assure you I will provide it if I am the next Secretary of State.”
Republican nominee Dennis Linthicum did not immediately comment, but has long criticized automatic voter registration. After the initial error, he told Portland-based KOIN that allowing undocumented immigrants to vote in Oregon elections was the “entire political agenda” of Democrats who hold majorities in the state Legislature.
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