Kotek's curious redaction

What do you think the Governor's office redacted from its notes from a call trying to figure out how many noncitizens Oregon registered to vote?

What’s beneath the blacked out part?

With an eventful 2025 legislative session in Oregon’s rearview mirror, I’m here to ask for your help. No, I’m not asking for money (this time). You Oregon Roundup readers consistently surprise me with your knowledge, wisdom, intellect and superb taste in online newsletters about Oregon politics.

So, I’ve got a question for you smarties.

As we’ve reported previously, September 14, 2024, the day after news broke that Oregon’s Department of Motor Vehicles and Secretary of State’s office had unlawfully registered noncitizens to vote since around 2020, top staff from state agencies and the Office of Governor Tina Kotek held a hastily arranged conference call to try to get control of a story already garnering national media attention. As of April 2025, the ever-growing total number of voters registered by Oregon without showing proof of U.S. citizenship stood at 1,739, according to AP.

Someone took notes of the call. After a lengthy process of multiple public records requests to multiple agencies, Oregon Roundup obtained a redacted copy of the notes from the Governor’s office. There is one redaction. Before deciding whether to sue the Governor’s office to try to force it to produce an unredacted version, I’d love to know what you think might have been redacted.

Here’s the pertinent part of the three pages of notes:

Source: Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s office

If the image above is an issue for you, the redaction is in a section labeled “Lookback period” in category “2. Data review.”

Here’s what it more or less looks like in text:

• Lookback period:

• Passports: since Jan 2021 (2021 operative date of driver’s license for all)

• Birth certificates - goes back to Jan 6 2020 (when new system went live)

• RRRRRREEEEEDDDDDAAAAACCCCCCTTTTTTIIIIIIIOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNN

During the “lookback period” portion of the call, I believe staff discussed sources of information about a registered voter’s citizenship to allow for cross-referencing to identify noncitizen registered voters. It is illegal under Oregon and federal law for noncitizens to register, or be registered, to vote.

Staff identified passports and birth certificates as sources citizenship verification information. In 2021, Oregon began providing driver’s licenses to noncitizens. It was the combination of this change and the state’s aggressive motor voter law, which registers people to vote without their consent when they get a driver’s license at the DMV that apparently led to the registration of noncitizens to vote.

They also appear to have identified a third source of citizenship information, which the Governor’s office redacted before producing the notes to us. I’ve thought quite a bit about what that third source, if that’s what it is, could be. I considered it may be a federal database states use to verify citizenship, a database in which former Elections Director Molly Woon expressed interest as the noncitizen registration scandal unfolded, but the unredacted portion of the notes shows staff discussed federal databases. So, I assume it’s probably not that.

I’ve asked people in a position to know in Salem (the Governor’s spokesperson, Elisabeth Shepard, who arranged the September 14 call, no longer responds to my inquiries), and come up blank. That’s where you come in.

It may help to know the Governor’s office relies on an exception to the public records law that allows agencies to redact communications “of an advisory nature to the extent that they cover other than purely factual materials and are preliminary to any final agency determination.” ORS 192.355(1).

That exception exists to prevent disclosure of speculative stuff, so state officials feel comfortable suggesting things that may not ever come to fruition. I don’t think it applies very well here, in part because the unredacted portion of the notes consists almost entirely of communications of an advisory nature that cover other than purely factual materials. For example, I don’t believe Oregon used any of the federal databases provided in the unredacted portion of the notes.

But, suing the Governor’s office over a redaction is going to be costly and time-consuming, so I’d like to have some idea whether the juice is worth the squeeze, as they say.

So, let me know in the comments or just by responding to this email if you have any ideas.

Thanks!