The Oregon DMV admitted on Friday that it had unintentionally registered over 300 non-citizens as voters since 2021 The Oregonian reported. The mistake violates both state and federal laws, which bar non-citizens from participating in local or national elections.
Part of the error stemmed from Oregon’s decision to allow undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses starting in 2019. According to Kevin Glenn, spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation, which manages the DMV, the agency typically registers most individuals to vote automatically when they receive a license or ID.
Glenn noted that a preliminary review by the state transportation department found that 306 non-citizens had been mistakenly registered as voters. Out of that group, only two have participated in any election since 2021. He emphasized that the issue affects the entire state, rather than being confined to specific counties. “It’s basically a data entry issue,” Glenn explained.
DMV Administrator Amy Joyce, during a call with The Oregonian/OregonLive and OPB on Friday, explained that the department is still reviewing records to identify other possible registration errors. She expects more cases of non-citizens being registered to surface. To address the issue, the DMV has added a third verification step, building on its existing two-step process that checks for U.S. passports or birth certificates when issuing licenses.
In recent presidential elections, Oregon has consistently leaned Democrat. In 2020, Joe Biden won the state with about 56% of the vote, continuing a trend seen in previous elections. Hillary Clinton secured a similar margin in 2016, winning 50% of the vote against Donald Trump’s 39%. Oregon has been a Democrat stronghold in presidential elections since 1988, with its urban centers like Portland driving much of the state’s liberal voting patterns. The last Republican to win Oregon in a presidential race was Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Nearly ten years ago, Oregon enacted a motor voter law that automatically registered individuals to vote when they applied for or renewed a driver’s license, provided they were 18 or older. In 2019, the state Legislature approved a separate law allowing individuals without proof of legal residency to obtain a driver’s license. The combination of these two laws has now created an unforeseen issue, first reported by Willamette Week. The Oregon DMV, a division of the Department of Transportation, recently identified that the automatic voter registration process had led to unintended errors, registering some individuals who weren’t eligible to vote.
State Treasurer Tobias Read, a Democrat aiming to succeed Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, expressed his dismay at the news. “I’m glad this was discovered, but I am appalled that it happened in the first place. The responsibility for managing our election system lies with the Secretary of State’s Office. No voters should be added to the registration rolls until the secretary of state has been able to independently verify that the data it receives from any source is accurate and complete.”
Read finished, “I hope that the current secretary of state will work quickly to protect the integrity of our system. People can be sure that if I am elected secretary of state, it will be the first order of business.”
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