Lane County Clerk Dena Dawson, pictured here in 2023, has been named Oregon's next elections director.
Rebecca Hansen-White / KLCC
The top elections official in Lane County will soon oversee voting statewide.
Incoming Secretary of State Tobias Read announced Monday he has hired Lane County Clerk Dena Dawson to serve as Oregon’s elections director.
“In partnership with Director Dawson, I look forward to listening to and collaborating with our county clerks to conduct safe, accessible, and secure elections,” Read said in a statement, noting he’d met Dawson and dozens of other county clerks as he campaigned for secretary.
Dawson will bring a wealth of experience administering elections when she begins in January.
Before being appointed to her position in Lane County in 2022, Dawson served as the city of Denver’s elections director. According to her LinkedIn profile, she’s also held positions in elections offices in Douglas County, Nevada, and a pair of Colorado counties, Adams and Archuleta. She is originally from Pueblo, Colorado.
From 2012 to 2014, Dawson worked in the Multnomah County elections office. The county’s elections director, Tim Scott, called her “a public servant through and through.”
“Oregonians can trust that she will be a competent, steady hand who will bring people together to solve problems,” Scott said in a statement.
The choice of elections director is pivotal for Read as he looks to increase trust in an office that last year saw Secretary of State Shemia Fagan resign amid scandal, and is currently grappling with revelations potential noncitizens were registered to vote.
Dawson will take over for current Elections Director Molly Woon, a former deputy director for the Democratic Party of Oregon who did not have direct experience in elections administration prior to being tapped by Fagan in early 2023.
While Woon successfully oversaw this year’s elections and had served in a prior secretary of state’s administration, conservatives have at times used her work history to suggest she is partisan. Read’s transition team told Woon earlier this month she would not have a role in his office, and she tendered her resignation last week.
Since becoming Lane County’s clerk in 2022, Dawson has spoken repeatedly with OPB’s Think Out Loud about some of the difficulties presented by modern-day elections.
That includes dealing with groups who question the accuracy and integrity of the state’s vote-by-mail system.
“I meet frequently with our local voter integrity group and … I’ve even reached out to them and said that if they’re hearing anything or they read something that’s concerning, to pass it on to me so that I can make sure that I’m informed,” Dawson told OPB in September. “I find that it’s really helpful for me to, in addition to the alerts that we’re getting from the Secretary of State’s office, to just keep my finger on the pulse of what’s happening. And the group is not always happy with the information that I’m providing.”
Last year, Dawson’s Lane County office received mail with a suspicious substance inside not long after a special election there. The envelope was ultimately deemed safe, but the experience left Dawson and her staff rattled.
“I consider election work to be complex and technical and it really requires a lot of us,” she told Think Out Loud last year. “It requires dedicated public servants who are willing to put their lives on hold and we put our work above our family and our friends, and now it really comes with threats and the actual possibility of death.”
On Monday, Dawson called it “an honor” to be named head of the state’s elections.
“I will do my utmost to be the collaborative and transparent leader our state can count on to make sure our laws are followed and every voice is heard in our elections,” she said in a statement.
Read, a Democrat, takes office on Jan. 6. Dawson will begin her role on Jan. 21.
