PORTLAND — Oregon elections officials said Monday they had struck over 1,200 people from the state’s voter rolls after determining they did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship when they were registered to vote.
Of those found to be possibly ineligible, only nine people voted in elections since 2021, the Oregon secretary of state’s office said. County clerks are working to confirm whether those people were indeed ineligible when they cast their ballots, or just hadn’t provided the required documentation when they were registered to vote, said Molly Woon, the office’s elections director.
The disclosures come amid heightened scrutiny of voter rolls nationwide, from Oregon to Arizona and Texas, as the presidential election nears. Citing an influx of immigrants in recent years at the U.S.-Mexico border, Republicans have raised concerns about the possibility that people who aren’t citizens will be voting, even though state data indicates such cases are rare.
In Oregon, for example, the nine people whose citizenship hasn’t been confirmed and who cast ballots represent a tiny fraction of the state’s 3 million registered voters. Ten people were found to have voted after being improperly registered, but one was later confirmed to be eligible, authorities said.
The secretary of state’s office sent letters to the 1,259 people who were improperly registered to let them know their registration had been inactivated. They will not receive a ballot for the 2024 election unless they reregister with documents proving their citizenship. The state’s deadline to register to vote is Oct. 15.
The mistake occurred in part because Oregon has allowed noncitizens to obtain driver’s licenses since 2019, and the state’s DMV automatically registers most people to vote when they obtain a license or ID. When DMV staff enter information in the computer system about someone applying for a driver’s license or state ID, they can incorrectly choose an option in a drop-down menu that codes that person as having a U.S. passport or birth certificate when they actually provided a foreign passport or birth certificate, authorities said.
The DMV has taken steps to fix the issue, elections and transportation authorities said.
It has reordered the drop-down menu in alphabetical order so that a U.S. passport isn’t the first default option. There will also be a prompt for U.S. passports asking DMV staff to confirm the document type. And if presented with a birth certificate, staff are now also required to enter the state and county of birth.
Additionally, office managers will now do a daily quality check to verify that the document entries match the document that was scanned, authorities said.
Gov. Tina Kotek on Monday called for the DMV to take further steps, such as providing updated training to staff and establishing a data quality control calendar in coordination with the secretary of state. She also called for a comprehensive report that outlines how the errors occurred, how they were corrected and how they will be prevented in the future.
Republican lawmakers in Oregon, who sent a letter to Kotek last week asking her to take steps to ensure the integrity of the state’s voter lists, have called for a public hearing on the issue.
Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade said the election in November “will not be affected by this error in any way.”
The issue has also gripped other states.
Last week, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled that nearly 98,000 voters whose citizenship documents hadn’t been confirmed can vote in state and local races. Most of them were voters who registered long ago and attested under the penalty of law that they are citizens. And in August, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Republican push that could have blocked more than 41,000 Arizona voters from casting ballots in the closely contested swing state, but allowed some parts of a law to be enforced, requiring proof of citizenship.”
State and federal laws prohibit people who aren’t citizens from voting in national and local elections. This includes people who are in the country with legal status — such as green-card holders, people on student visas, tourists and temporary workers — and those without legal status.
