Kotek's office sought emergency noncitizen voter briefing from dark money group

The day after news broke Oregon registered noncitizens to vote, Gov's office sought briefing from out-of-state left-leaning dark money group that champions motor voter systems like Oregon's

Email from Elisabeth Shepard from the Governor’s office to head of DMV, Elections Director and other staff

The September day after news first broke that Oregon’s motor voter system had unlawfully registered noncitizens to vote, staff from state agencies and the Office of Governor Tina Kotek hastily arranged a Saturday virtual meeting to include a briefing from an out-of-state nonprofit tied to the Chicago-based leftwing dark money nonprofit that reportedly first alerted Oregon to the voter registration scandal that quickly became national news.

Emails obtained by Oregon Roundup via public records request show staffers scrambling to understand and communicate the breadth and scope of the biggest threat to Oregon election integrity in recent years. Various Oregon media outlets, including Willamette Week, first reported the registration of non-citizens the afternoon of Friday, September 13. That night, staffers arranged a call via video conferencing software Microsoft Teams for 11:30 am - 12:30 pm the next day, a Saturday.

At 8:45 Saturday morning, Elisabeth Shepard, communications director for Kotek’s office, emailed the other call participants, including staff for the Oregon Department of Transportation and Secretary of State’s office, to inquire,

“Are folks available to extend this meeting to 12:45 pm for a briefing from the Center for Secure and Modern Elections?”

“Please confirm ASAP. If not, we will find another time today.” (Bold in original email).

Influence Watch, a (UPDATE: conservative) website that tracks the activities and donors of nonprofits, describes the Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME) as a “left-of-center advocacy organization created as a project of the New Venture Fund, a leading ‘dark money’ pass-through funder and fiscal sponsor, to promote sweeping changes to the elections process, including state laws that automatically register voters at state agencies.”

The New Venture Fund, according to Influence Watch, “is part of a multibillion-dollar ‘dark money’ network run by the consulting firm Arabella Advisors in Washington, DC.”*

The policy and research director for CSME testified before the Oregon legislature in support of HB 2499, now law, which will automatically register to vote recipients of the low-income health insurance program Medicaid.

In 2022, CSME spawned the Institute for Responsive Government, the dark money nonprofit that in late summer 2024 reportedly first alerted Oregon to the fact it had registered non-citizens to vote. The Institute for Responsive Government, which advocates for automatic voter registration and opposed efforts to verify voter citizenship in other states, was involved with a video, recorded over the summer, in which Oregon Elections Director Molly Woon said she thought it unfortunate if anyone was denied a ballot “for any reason whatsoever.”

Just why the Institute for Responsive Government knew Oregon had registered noncitizens to vote before Oregon is unclear. As is the inclusion of a briefing by it or its parent nonprofit as the State of Oregon said it was trying to figure out the full scope of the registrations. The state initially announced it had registered 306 voters who had not demonstrated citizenship; the number now stands at over 1,500 based upon subsequent disclosures.

Under Oregon’s motor voter system, the DMV, part of ODOT, is supposed to send to the Secretary of State’s office information on individuals who apply for driver’s licenses and who show proof of citizenship. The Secretary of State then registers those individuals as voters. In practice, in some cases, Oregon admits DMV sent information to the Secretary of State to register noncitizens.

All relevant state agencies have attributed the unlawful registration of over 1,500 individuals who failed to demonstrate proof of citizenship to data entry errors and other mistakes.

I emailed the following spokespeople last night and early this morning with questions about the planned briefing from an out-of-state left-leaning automatic voter registration advocacy group as state agencies grappled with the mishandling of data entirely in the possession of those state agencies:

Elisabeth Shepard, Gov. Kotek’s Communications Director, who sent the email about the briefing;

Ali Javery, Communications Director for the Institute for Responsive Government (CSME does not list a spokesperson on its website);

Chris Crabb, ODOT spokesperson;

Laura Kerns, spokesperson for the Secretary of State.

Of those, only Kerns responded. Today at 10:10 am, she referred me to the Governor’s Office, “as they organized the meeting, they can better answer your questions.” I forwarded that email to Elisabeth Shepard in the Governor’s Office letting her know that the Secretary of State’s office referred me to the Governor’s Office. I received no response from Shepard to that email, either.

Just for fun, here are the questions I asked Shepard and remain unanswered by her, and by anyone in or outside the employ of the State of Oregon, as of publication Wednesday afternoon:

1. Did CSME brief staff on Saturday, September 14? If so, who from CSME briefed staff?

2. What was the content of CSME’s briefing? Were documents provided by CSME?

3. Was the Microsoft Teams call of Saturday, September 14 recorded?

4. Why did you think it important to include a CSME briefing on the call?

5. What role, if any, does CSME play in supporting the operations of Oregon’s motor voter system?

6. Anything else my readers should know about any of this?

*Further update: A reader helpfully pointed out that my failure to describe Influence Watch as a conservative website is ironic. It is! I was lazy in quoting Influence Watch, especially without noting its conservative leanings. I could, and should, have gone into considerably more detail about how CSME and the Institute for Responsive Government are part of the same network of leftwing nonprofits (I don’t know how else to describe them) that have supported policies like Oregon’s hard drug decriminalizing Measure 110 and the recently defeated rank choice voting ballot measure.