Oregon's election integrity problem

The state's illegally registering 1,250 noncitizens to vote is but one risk arising from the principle of registering people to vote against their will.

Then-Governor Kate Brown signs Oregon’s new motor voter law in 2015, requiring DMV and Secretary of State to register people to vote with or without their consent.

Hi, this evening I have a hodgepodge of things related to Oregon’s automatic voter registration system, which has come under fire since the state disclosed that it had registered noncitizens to vote via that system.

We’ll update the numbers of affected voters, analyze the root of election integrity concerns arising from AVR (it’s not just the registering noncitizens to vote), and touch on a legislative hearing tomorrow (Wednesday) on the subject.

Oregon now says it illegally registered 1,259 noncitizens to vote, ten of whom have cast ballots.

The State of Oregon yesterday announced it had illegally registered 1,259 noncitizens to vote since 2021. Ten of those noncitizens have a history of voting in Oregon, although in at least one case the state believes the person voted once becoming a citizen. The announcement nearly quadruples the state’s original estimate, issued 11 days ago, of at least 306 illegally registered noncitizens.

With that news out of the way, let’s dig into why Oregon was in a position to register noncitizens to vote in the first place . . .

Automatic Voter Registration, what is it?

The practice of registering people to vote without their consent is called “opt-out” voter registration or “automatic voter registration” (AVR). The current version of Oregon’s motor-voter law is an example of AVR: when an Oregon resident gets a driver license or ID card from the DMV, the resident is automatically registered to vote. The only way to opt out as a voter is to fill out, sign and mail a card to the state within 21 days of receipt. The 21-day deadline is but one indication the state really doesn’t want people to opt out. The goal with AVR is to register as many people as possible, a goal at which Oregon has, obviously, excelled.

AVR is a priority of progressive states like this one and the progressive nonprofit that reportedly informed Oregon it had registered noncitizens in the first place. The Oregonian first reported last week that The Institute for Responsive Government, a Chicago based nonprofit, first alerted the State of Oregon to the fact it had registered noncitizens to vote.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, in disclosing the registration of noncitizens in a Willamette Week story that appeared late afternoon Friday, September 13, had said the problem “was discovered because the Oregon DMV and the secretary of state were doing their due diligence ahead of the 2024 election.”

The Institute for Responsive Government, funded by the massive left-wing donor network New Venture Fund and managed by progressive consulting powerhouse Arabella Advisors, advocates for automatic voter registration nationwide. The Institute and Oregon say automatic voter registration “modernizes” voter registration by extending it to people who otherwise would not register to vote.

Oregon media has been referring to The Institute for Responsive Government as a “think tank.” If the Institute were conservative, rather than progressive, they would be calling it a “dark money operation,” because that’s what it is.

Map of states that use automatic voter registration. “Secure AVR” means the person a person interacting with one or more state agencies is registered to vote. “Partial AVR” means the person actively consents and attests to their eligibility as a registered voter. (Source: Institute for Responsive Government).

I contacted a spokesperson for The Institute for Responsive Government requesting an interview about the Institute’s role in shaping Oregon’s AVR system, and in identifying the state’s registration of noncitizens as voters. Sadly, if unsurprisingly, I did not receive a response.

AVR + mail elections = a lot of ballots sent to people who may not want them.

Whether registering people to vote against their will constitutes “modernization,” it has led to hundreds of thousands of new voters registered in Oregon since the state’s new motor voter law took effect in 2016. The state says AVR has registered 755,000 new voters since the motor voter law took effect.

Prior to elections, Oregon mails ballots to all registered voters. With AVR, that means three-quarter of a million ballots are mailed to registered voters who did not ask to be registered. Because Oregon allows ballot harvesting, the practice of political organizations obtaining a voted ballot and returning it to the county clerk on behalf of a voter, AVR represents a big trove of potential voters for ballot harvesters to target. The opportunity for fraud with this number of unrequested ballots circulating in the state is substantial.

The state requires county clerks to match ballot envelope signatures with signatures on file as a safeguard against fraud, but offers no other safeguards. The state insists that its voting system is secure; it also had insisted until recently that it registered no noncitizens to vote.

Motor voter laws didn’t used to be this way.

Congress made motor voter the law of the land in 1993 via the National Voter Registration Act. Under that law, states were required to make available to people obtaining a driver license an application to register to vote which the person could fill out and submit while providing proof that they are citizens and otherwise qualified to vote in federal elections. Oregon, like I believe all states, registers voters for state and federal elections via the same process.

Oregon’s original motor voter law followed suit: it gave qualified driver license applicants the option to register to vote, too. In 2015, the state substituted its will, to register as many voters as possible, for the will of Oregonians who chose not to register to vote.

Oregon is poised to expand AVR to Medicaid recipients.

The legislature passed, and Governor Kotek signed, a new law in 2023 to automatically register to vote Oregonians who apply for the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid program. Much like with the AVR motor voter law, supportive legislators justify the expansion as a means to bring underrepresented groups into the pool of registered voters. Just like AVR motor voter, the law would register hundreds of thousands of new voters who have expressed no desire to register to vote.

The Oregon Health Plan AVR law is not yet in effect, because the federal government forbids sharing private information about Medicaid recipients, which is necessary in order to make AVR work. The concern, in the case of Oregon, is justified. The state’s DMV suffered in 2023 a massive data breach in part because of its sharing of DMV data with the Elections Division for motor voter purposes.

Oregon’s two Democratic senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, last year leaned on the federal government to green light the AVR expansion. The main hurdle for the feds is what makes Oregon’s approach to AVR appealing to Democrats like Wyden and Merkley and left-wing organizations like The Institute for Responsive Government: injecting people’s information into the voting system when they have not consented to it. The feds have approved a Medicaid voter registration program in Massachusetts because it allows Medicaid applicants to opt out of voter registration when applying for Medicaid. Oregon insists on automatically registering and only removing someone from the voter rolls if they mail back the card. The safeguards for ensuring citizenship would be the same as those that failed under the AVR law.

Oregon’s election integrity trade-off.

There is a tradeoff between registering people to vote against their will and election integrity, particularly in a vote by mail state that allows ballot harvesting. Oregon has cast its lot, and then doubled down, on registering as many people as possible. Registering 1,250 noncitizens to vote is but a sample of AVR’s threat to election integrity.

Legislative oversight hearing tomorrow (Wednesday).

The House Interim Committee on Rules will hold a hearing on “Automatic Voter Registration and Election Safeguards” tomorrow starting at 11:30 am. The hearing will be livestreamed, accessible here.

This is, in theory, an opportunity for legislative oversight, something I harp on fairly regularly. I might do a live chat here on Substack to cover it. Stay tuned.