UPDATE: On September 30th, state officials said that seven noncitizens had voted, a reduction of two from the past total. Two people were confirmed to be citizens.
Oregon transportation officials first learned in early August that errors within the Driver and Motor Vehicles office had led to improper voter registrations — nearly a month and a half before unveiling that fact to the public, the governor, or the state’s top election official.
Voters at the Multnomah County Elections Division in Portland, Ore., Nov. 8, 2022. Oregon voters can vote by mail-in ballot, drop ballots at secure sites, or vote in-person
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
A spokesman for the Department of Transportation, Kevin Glenn, said Friday that DMV “learned of the existence of errant registrations around August 1, though the scope or cause was unclear.”
That date is six weeks before LaVonne Griffin-Valade says she became aware of the error, which resulted in more than 1,200 suspected noncitizens being added to voter rolls. In a release earlier this month, the secretary of state’s office said it “was made aware of the issue late on September 12, and acted within 24 hours.”
Gov. Tina Kotek was even farther out of the loop, despite the fact she has authority over ODOT and DMV. Spokesperson Elisabeth Shepard said Friday the governor was only made aware of the problem on Sept. 13, the same day the news became public.
By then, DMV was partway through a comprehensive review of transactions in which Oregonians received driver’s licenses.
The review concluded 10 days later and resulted in a finding that 1,259 people had been registered to vote in error since early 2021, after presenting a foreign birth certificate or passport while obtaining a driver’s license. Nine suspected noncitizens went on to vote in elections, a possible violation of state and federal law.
Elections officials are still working to determine whether those people had become U.S. citizens before casting a ballot.
The timeline offered by DMV raises questions about why the agency kept the error to itself as it analyzed the problem, rather than alerting the office charged with running state elections. Glenn did not immediately respond to follow-up questions on Friday.
Elections officials have said that they can ensure that no noncitizens will be sent ballots this year now that the error has been uncovered. DMV has altered its processes to ensure clerical errors that led to the improper registrations don’t happen again.
“We regret this situation occurred, but our priority was to correct the issue before the coming election and we are relieved that our swift action allowed DMV and the Secretary of State to do so,” Glenn said.
Griffin-Valade’s chief of staff, Ben Morris, did not directly answer a question Friday about whether the office would have liked to learn about the matter sooner.
“We appreciate the DMV’s work to help us correct this error before ballots went out for the 2024 election,” he said.
Since 2016, Oregon has automatically registered people to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license in the state, so long as they present proof of citizenship.
The state’s pioneering policy has led to curiosity from national groups, including, on July 29, an inquiry from a think tank called the Institute for Responsive Government.
According to a representative from the organization, IRG had an informal phone call with the DMV’s information systems office that involved “a high-level discussion on DMV voter registration modernization and best practices in ensuring accurate data.”
DMV Administrator Amy Joyce said this month that that conversation led the DMV to examine its voter registration process.
“The questions were, vaguely, sort of, ‘How’s it going and are you seeing any errors,’” Joyce told lawmakers in a legislative hearing this week. “That’s what keyed us off to say, ‘Well let’s go see.’”
The revelations of improper registrations have created an opening for Republicans, long skeptical of the state’s election laws, to press for change. GOP politicians in recent days have called on Democrats to institute tighter policies when it comes to updating voter rolls, and are pledging to introduce legislation next year addressing the matter.
ODOT, meanwhile, says it will order an external review of its data processes, a step ordered by Kotek.