Oregon removes another 302 people from the voter rolls due to lack of proof of citizenship

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon authorities said Monday they had removed another 302 people from the state's voter rolls after discovering in the latest revelation that they did not provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote had provided improper voter registrations due to clerical errors at the state DMV.

Monday's announcement brings the total number of misregistrations to 1,561, in addition to the 1,259 people whose voter registrations have already been inactivated because of the issue. It came the same day the DMV released a report on the errors that occurred first confirmed by authorities last month.

The mistake happened in part because Oregon passed a law in 2019 that allowed some non-citizen residents to get a driver's license. And the state's so-called “motor voter” law, which went into effect in 2016, automatically registers most people to vote when they apply for a new driver's license or identification card.

“Two weeks ago, we believed we had all the information to provide assurance that we understood and reviewed all records at risk of error,” DMV Administrator Amy Joyce said in a statement. “We have since learned that this confidence was misplaced based on the new information presented in this announcement and the supplementary report, and for that we regret it.” DMV will follow the governor's guidance and continue to engage in continued learning, Employ corrective action, transparency and accountability.”

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has ordered the DMV to suspend automatic voter registration. In a joint statement with Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade, she also called for an independent, outside audit of the state's motor voter system.

“The first step in restoring the public’s trust in Oregon Motor Voter is a transparent review by a neutral third party subject to rigorous state auditing standards,” Griffin-Valade said in a statement.

Griffin-Valade said she has “full confidence” that the errors will have no impact on the November election.

According to the statement, she has directed her office's election division to immediately hire a new position to oversee motor voters. And she has directed the department to establish a documented process for conducting regular data audits at the DMV and to update administrative rules for the Motor Voter system.

Of the 302 additional cases, 178 were due to people from the U.S. territory of American Samoa being misclassified as U.S. citizens, the DMV report said. However, under federal law, people from American Samoa are U.S. citizens, not citizens, and do not have equal voting rights. An additional 123 records were due to the previously identified clerical error but were not included in previous reviews due to a newly identified software issue. And one case was caught by the DMV's new quality controls.

The secretary of state's office said it was working to verify whether the 302 people voted.

In its report, the DMV detailed the measures it took to correct the error, including multiple changes to the computer system into which voter information is entered, manual daily quality checks and employee training.

Of the 1,259 people previously identified as possibly ineligible to vote, ten were found to have voted after incorrect registration, but at least five were later confirmed to have been citizens when they cast their vote, the DMV statement says. Those who voted after registering in error make up a tiny fraction of the state's 3 million registered voters.