Oregon SOS Registered 1,200 Possible Noncitizens To Vote

After her office registered more than 1,200 potential noncitizens to vote, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade touted the “motor voter” system and insisted noncitizen voting is “exceedingly rare.”

“We can continue to be proud that automatic voter registration is just one of the ways we ensure eligible Oregonians have the opportunity to exercise their right to vote,” Griffin-Valade said Monday in a press release. “Noncitizen voting remains exceedingly rare in Oregon and around the country.”

The secretary discovered earlier this month that more than 300 noncitizens were erroneously registered to vote, prompting an investigation, as The Federalist previously reported. The investigation found the state’s “motor voter” system had registered 1,259 potential noncitizens to vote, nine of whom had voted. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is a federal crime. 

Griffin-Valade has inactivated all of these registrations — 306 after the initial discovery, and 953 yesterday, according to the release. While these people will not receive a mail-in ballot for the 2024 election, they “will be given the opportunity to re-register if eligible with adequate time to do so prior to the election.”

The secretary’s office and DMV reviewed 1.4 million records related to credentials issued, renewed, or replaced since Jan. 1, 2021, the date when Oregon expanded acceptable ID documents to include foreign passports and birth certificates, according to the release.

Background

It took the left-wing Institute for Responsive Government to prompt a review of the state’s voter rolls. The state only began looking into the issue after IRG called the Oregon Department of Transportation, according to the release.

“Due to the critical importance of the issue, DMV exercised due diligence and looked into the automatic voter registration process,” the release read.

Griffin-Valade’s office discovered more than 300 noncitizens were registered to vote Sept. 12, as The Federalist previously reported. This happened through an error at the DMV, where workers made errors recording the forms of identification provided, which made the state’s “motor voter” protocol automatically register them to vote. 

When Oregon residents 16 and older apply for a permit, driver’s license, or ID, and show documents proving American citizenship, the DMV sends their information to the secretary of state’s office, which registers them to vote. Workers made errors like recording foreign passports as U.S. passports and recording foreign birth certificates as U.S. birth certificates. Oregon DMV Administrator Amy Joyce previously told The Federalist these were “possible, though unlikely, causes for error.”

After the initial discovery, the DMV added a prompt to its data entry screen to verify staff members are recording proper forms of citizenship, Joyce told The Federalist at the time. The department began “daily auditing of all transactions” before sending registrations to the secretary’s office.

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