Lawsuit: Oregon SOS Destroyed Important Voter Records

A conservative legal group is suing Oregon’s secretary of state for allegedly destroying records from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) indicating which voters have been wrongfully removed from the rolls.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a complaint Jan. 28 against Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat, for allegedly failing to keep data from ERIC that would show which voters the database had wrongfully marked as deceased and flagged for removal.

ERIC is an elections database and network that supposedly helps states clean their voter rolls through membership, but it has close ties to the left, as The Federalist previously reported. It has deemed dead voters as “eligible but unregistered” in the past.

PILF had been requesting “deceased retractions” reports throughout 2023 and 2024, according to a press release. ERIC issues these reports to member states, showing voters the database had inaccurately flagged as dead and needing removal. 

Oregon is a member of the network, so PILF requested “deceased retractions” reports in April 2024 from Democrat Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade. A staffer denied this request, saying officials do not keep the data. 

“We receive the data monthly; however we do not download and retain the data,” a public records analyst wrote in an email to PILF.

But the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to retain “all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities” for “ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters” for two years.

“Oregon thus does not maintain the ERIC Retraction Reports for two years as the NVRA’s Public Disclosure Provision requires,” PILF’s lawsuit reads.

Since Read has since replaced Griffin-Valade, he is now the defendant as PILF is suing the Oregon secretary of state in his official capacity.

“The NVRA requires document preservation and transparency,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams in the release. “This is a case that the Biden Justice Department should have brought, but instead private parties have been stuck enforcing federal election laws.”

Registering Noncitizens To Vote

State officials discovered in September that glitches and oversights in the Oregon DMV’s “motor voter system” had registered more than 300 noncitizens to vote since 2021. Griffin-Valade and Democrat Gov. Tina Kotek ordered limited audits of the issue, finding more than 1,600 potentially ineligible voters on the rolls. 

Officials concluded workers at the Oregon DMV made errors recording the forms of identification provided, leading the system to automatically register noncitizens to vote. As The Federalist previously reported, the Oregon DMV processed more than 54,600 registrations for voters of “unknown citizenship” from June 2021 to October 2024.

Months later, before Read took office, Oregon’s then-Elections Director Molly Woon and other top staffers in Griffin-Valade’s office resigned. 

Leftist Ties

The DMV only found it helped register noncitizens to vote because the leftist group Institute for Responsive Government (IRG) inquired about the state’s “motor voter” system, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The IRG is a project of The New Venture Fund, of the leftist dark money network Arabella Advisors, according to InfluenceWatch. It issued “Zuckbucks”-style grants to local election offices ahead of November.

IRG Executive Director Sam Oliker-Friedland is chief counsel for the left-wing Center for Secure and Modern Elections, also under Arabella’s New Venture Fund. After finding Oregon’s “motor voter” system had registered noncitizens to vote, state officials including Woon planned a briefing call with CSME, according to emails obtained through a FOIA request by Oregon journalist Jeff Eager.

Following the 2020 election, Louisiana’s attorney general sued CSME and the Center for Tech and Civic Life — which are “closely connected” according to InfluenceWatch — alleging illegal interference. 

ERIC was founded by David Becker, who leads another group — the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). Together, CEIR and the Center for Technology and Civic Life funneled close to $400 million from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to local election offices in 2020, boosting Democrat turnout. Meanwhile, ERIC helps register the “new American majority” — changing the existing electorate, which Becker has disparaged as “disproportionately white, disproportionately wealthy and disproportionately old.” 

Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He is a spring 2025 fellow of The College Fix. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.