OR Elections Director Resigns After Noncitizens Found On Voter Rolls

Oregon’s elections director has resigned “in lieu of removal” by the next secretary of state, months after it was revealed that state officials registered noncitizens to vote.

Democrat Tobias Read, the current state treasurer, won November’s election to replace current Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, also a Democrat. Earlier this week, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported, Elections Director Molly Woon told the current secretary of her plans to resign, signaling Read might remove her from office.

“In lieu of removal by the incoming administration, I submit my resignation from the position of Elections Director at the Secretary of State, effective 1/14/2025,” Woon wrote to Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade on Monday, according to the outlet.

Other top officials in the secretary’s office, including Deputy Secretary of State Cheryl Myers, Chief of Staff Ben Morris, Legislative Director Kathy Wai, and Audits Director Kip Memmott also announced resignations recently, both OPB and The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

Woon was deputy director of the Democrat Party of Oregon between 2018 and 2020, and she has been elections director in the secretary’s office since January 2023, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was embroiled in multiple scandals during her time with the secretary of state.

An executive at fraudulent cryptocurrency company FTX gave $500,000 to the state Democrat Party in 2022. In 2023, Woon refused to recuse herself from the investigation into the matter, despite her former position in the party.

Woon was also elections director when state officials discovered in September more than 300 noncitizens had been registered to vote since 2021. Following audits found more than 1,600 potentially ineligible voters on the rolls, allegedly due to glitches and oversights in the “motor voter” system at the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles.

The Oregon DMV also processed more than 54,600 voter registrations for individuals of “unknown citizenship” between June 2021 and October 2024, as The Federalist previously reported.

The DMV initially discovered it helped put more than 300 noncitizens on the voter rolls because the leftist group Institute for Responsive Government (IRG) inquired about the motor voter system, The Oregonian/OregonLive previously reported.

IRG — a project of The New Venture Fund under leftist dark money giant Arabella Advisors, according to InfluenceWatch — doled out “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, which similarly falls under the Arabella Advisors umbrella and advocates for automatic voter registration laws, according to InfluenceWatch.

After revelations Oregon’s system had registered noncitizens to vote in September, top state officials — including Woon — worked to plan a briefing call with CSME, Oregon journalist Jeff Eager reported, citing emails obtained by public records request.

Woon and Oliker-Friedland both appeared in a video this summer for the Skoll Foundation which claimed that “registering to vote is unnecessarily complicated” and proposed “secure automatic voter registration” as a “simple solution.” Woon gushed about Oregon’s automatic voter registration system, which placed noncitizens on the rolls. 

She said when Oregon voters have a “qualifying interaction” with the DMV, they receive a “motor voter” card with three options: “Do nothing,” and be registered as an unaffiliated voter; return the card to register with a political party; or opt out of registering to vote.

“[T]he first [option on the card] is ‘Do Nothing’ — just do nothing, and you’ll become automatically registered to vote,” Woon said in the video. “[T]o me, it is really unfortunate if someone is prevented from getting a ballot for any reason whatsoever.”

The Federalist contacted Woon regarding her resignation but did not receive a response by publication.

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.