PORTLAND, Ore., (AP) – Oregon authorities announced Monday that they had removed 302 more people from the state voter rolls because they failed to provide proof of citizenship at the time they registered to vote. This is the latest example of incorrect voter registrations resulting from clerical mistakes at the state DMV.
The announcement on Monday brings the total number to 1,561. This includes the 1,259 voters whose voter registrations were already inactivated due to the problem. The DMV released the report on the same day that authorities first acknowledged the errors.
Oregon passed a new law in 2019 that allows some residents who aren’t citizens to get driver’s licenses. The state’s “Motor Voter,” which went into effect in 2016, automatically registered most people to vote whenever they applied for a new ID or license.
Amy Joyce, DMV Administrator, said in a press release that “two weeks ago we thought we had all the information we needed to be confident we understood and had reviewed every record at risk of error.” We regret that this confidence was misplaced, based on the new information provided in this report and announcement. DMV will follow Governor‘s directed action and remain committed to continuous learning and corrective actions, transparency and accountability.”
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek directed the DMV halt automatic voter registration. In a joint press release with Oregon Secretary LaVonne Griffin Valade, she also called for a independent, external audit to be conducted on the state’s Motor Voter System.
Griffin-Valade stated in a press release that the first step to restoring public trust in Oregon Motor Voter was a transparent review conducted by a third party neutral operating under strict government auditing guidelines.
Griffin-Valade stated that she is “fully confident” that the errors will not impact the November elections.
According to a statement, she has ordered the elections division of her office to hire a new Motor Voter supervisor immediately. She also instructed the division’s elections division to create a documented procedure for performing regular data check with the DMV, and updating the administrative rules governing Motor Voter.
The DMV report stated that 178 of the 302 additional cases were due to people from American Samoa misclassified as U.S. Citizens. According to federal law, however, people from American Samoa do not have the same voting rights as citizens. They are U.S. Nationals. A clerical mistake had previously been identified, but 123 additional records were not included in previous reviews due to a newly discovered software issue. The DMV’s quality control system caught one case.
The Secretary of State’s Office said it is working to verify if the 302 people voted.
In its report, DMV detailed the actions taken to fix the mistake, including multiple changes made to the computer system that is used to enter voter information, manual quality checks performed daily, and staff training.
The DMV said that ten of the 1,259 people who were previously found to be ineligible voted despite being incorrectly registered. However, at least five of them were later confirmed as citizens. The number of people who voted despite being incorrectly registered is a small fraction of the 3 million registered voters in the state.
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