Officials in Oregon announced Monday that they have identified an additional 302 people on the state’s voter rolls who didn’t provide proof of citizenship when they were registered to vote.
The announcement comes just two weeks after officials in the Beaver state said 1,259 possible noncitizens have been registered to vote since 2021, bringing the total number of mistaken registrations to 1,561.
The mistakes occurred in part because Oregon passed a law in 2019 allowing some residents who aren’t citizens to obtain driver’s licenses. And the state’s so-called “Motor Voter” law, which took effect in 2016, automatically registers most people to vote when they seek a new license or ID.
OREGON MISTAKENLY REGISTERED NEARLY 1,260 POSSIBLE NONCITIZENS TO VOTE, DMV ADMITS
The improper voter registrations stem from clerical errors at the state DMV.
On Monday, the DMV released an “After Action Report,” which identified errors in its processes that led to the mistakes, with Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade then directing county elections officials to inactivate all 302 voter registrations.
Griffin-Valade and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, both Democrats, called for an independent, external audit of the motor voter system in a joint statement.
“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. “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.”
DMV Administrator Amy Joyce said the agency believed two weeks ago that it was confident it understood and had reviewed all records at risk of error.
“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,” Joyce said in a statement. “DMV will follow the Governor’s directed actions and remains committed to continuous learning, corrective action, transparency and accountability.”
Griffin-Valade has ordered her office’s elections division to immediately hire a new Motor Voter oversight position, according to the statement. And she has instructed the division to establish a documented process for performing regular data checks with the DMV and update the administrative rules governing the Motor Voter system.
She said the Oregon Elections Division will work with the 36 county election officers to determine if any of the erroneously registered voters have previously cast a ballot. Every registered voter in Oregon is sent a ballot in the mail and the state had an 81.97% voter turnout rate in 2020. President Biden beat former President Trump comfortably in the 2020 election, winning the state by more than 380,000 votes.
Of the 302 additional cases, 178 were due to people from the U.S. territory of American Samoa being misclassified as U.S. citizens, the DMV report said.
However, under federal law, people from American Samoa are U.S. nationals, not citizens, and don’t have the same right to vote. Another 123 records stemmed from the previously identified clerical error, but weren’t included in prior reviews due to a newly identified software issue. And one case was caught by the DMV’s new quality controls.
Griffin-Valade’s office says they are doing everything they can to prevent the 302 mistakenly registered voters from receiving a ballot, but cannot guarantee that all 302 ballots will be removed before they are mailed. Her office is putting in place a process that will ensure those ballots are not opened or counted.
Of the 1,259 possible noncitizens identified last month, 10 mistakenly enrolled individuals went on to cast a ballot, according to Oregon’s secretary of state, although at least one became a citizen before voting.
A DMV audit found staff may have accidentally selected “U.S. passport” when presented with a foreign passport, or “U.S. birth certificate” when given a foreign document, triggering voter enrollment.
The DMV said its drop-down menu has now been rearranged so “U.S. passport” is no longer the first, default option. Staff must also enter the state and county for all U.S. birth certificates and respond to a prompt when passport information is entered confirming that the documentation is accurate.
About half of all states, as well as Washington, D.C., have implemented automatic voter registration, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But there have been numerous allegations of improper enrollment in states without automatic registration too.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced in August that officials have purged 1.1 million ineligible names from the voter rolls since the 2020 presidential election.
Ohio’s secretary of state referred 138 noncitizens believed to have voted in previous elections to the state’s attorney general for possible criminal charges.
And a conservative watchdog group is suing Arizona’s Maricopa County for allegedly failing to remove more than 35,000 people who did not provide proof of citizenship.
Fox News’ Hannah Ray Lambert and Anders Hagstrom, as well as The Associated Press, contributed to this story.
