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WW has learned Oregon Driver & Motor Vehicle Services, which licenses drivers in the state, has mistakenly placed more than 300 non-citizens on the voting rolls since 2021.
Officials believe that 306 people without citizenship were registered to vote through a data entry error, but they believe just two of them actually cast ballots.
Nearly a decade ago, Oregon passed a motor voter law, which automatically registered people to vote when they sought a new license (and were 18 or over) or renewed an existing one. Then, in 2019, the Legislature passed a law that allowed certain people without proof of legal residence to obtain a driver’s license. Interplay between the two laws has now led to an unanticipated outcome.
DMV, which is part of the Oregon Department of Transportation, recently discovered that automatic registration resulted in the error.
State Treasurer Tobias Read, a Democrat who is running to succeed Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, reacted to the news with dismay.
“I’m glad this was discovered, but I am appalled that it happened in the first place,” Read said. “The responsibility for managing our election system lies with the Secretary of State’s Office. No voters should be added to the registration rolls until the secretary of state has been able to independently verify that the data it receives from any source is accurate and complete. I hope that the current secretary of state will work quickly to protect the integrity of our system. People can be sure that if I am elected secretary of state, it will be the first order of business.”
State Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Happy Valley), who is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, called for an immediate probe into what went wrong.
“The right to a free and fair election is non-negotiable,” Bynum said. “The attorney general must launch a full-scale investigation into the allegations of registering non-citizens. Any errors in this process are unacceptable, and the office of the secretary of state must be held responsible for any such lapses. I will relentlessly defend our laws and safeguard the integrity of our elections.”
Gov. Tina Kotek said the mistake affects a tiny fraction of the more than three million registered voters in Oregon.
Oregon’s electoral system is one of the most secure, effective and accessible in the nation,” Kotek says. “The error in data entry which may have affected the voter eligibility of some Oregonians voter registration was discovered because the Oregon DMV and the secretary of state were doing their due diligence ahead of the 2024 election. I have been fully briefed on the situation that could affect 0.01% of registered voters based on available data. My office will continue to closely monitor the situation. This situation will not impact the 2024 election in any way. At my direction, the Oregon DMV is taking urgent corrective action to prevent any such error from occurring in the future.”
Elections director Molly Woon tells WW she learned of DMV’s error at 4:30 pm Sept. 12. Woon says that the people who were mistakenly registered did not ask to be registered and did nothing wrong. Rather, DMV personnel entered their information incorrectly and transmitted their names and registration to the elections division. “DMV should not be sending us any record that hasn’t been verified,” Woon says.
County clerks have been told to remove names from the rolls that should not have been added. Woon says that DMV is still auditing its files to see whether other names were mistakenly passed along to her agency but she is confident that process will be concluded quickly.
“This will not impact the 2024 election,” Woon says. “Anybody who did not demonstrate citizenship will be removed from the rolls.”