Oregon DMV waited weeks to tell elections officials about voter registration error

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon transportation authorities waited weeks to tell elections officials about an error that registered over 1,200 people to vote, despite them not providing proof of U.S. citizenship.

Oregon’s Driver & Motor Vehicle Services, or DMV, first learned of the improper registrations on Aug. 1, “though the scope or cause was unclear,” Department of Transportation spokesperson Kevin Glenn told Oregon Public Broadcasting.

But Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade said she only became aware of the error six weeks later on Sept. 12. And Gov. Tina Kotek learned of the problem on Sept. 13, according to spokesperson Elisabeth Shepard.

The mistake occurred in part because Oregon has allowed noncitizens to obtain driver’s licenses since 2019, and the state’s DMV automatically registers most people to vote when they obtain a license or ID.

Last week, Oregon elections officials said they struck 1,259 people from voter rolls after determining they did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship when they were registered to vote. They will not receive a ballot for the 2024 election unless they reregister with documents proving their citizenship.

Of those found to be possibly ineligible, nine people voted in elections since 2021 — a tiny fraction of the state’s 3 million registered voters. Ten people were found to have voted after being improperly registered, but one was later confirmed to be eligible, authorities said.

Elections officials are working to confirm whether those people were indeed ineligible when they cast their ballots, or just hadn’t provided the required documentation when they were registered to vote.

Glenn, the department of transportation spokesperson, did not respond Friday to OPB’s questions about why the DMV kept the error to itself instead of alerting elections officials.

Ben Morris, chief of staff for Secretary of State Griffin-Valade, did not directly answer a question from OPB about whether the office would have liked to learn about the problem sooner.

The DMV has taken steps to fix what it described as a clerical data-entry issue, transportation and elections authorities said. Kotek has also called on the agency to provide updated staff training, establish a data quality control calendar in coordination with the secretary of state, and provide a comprehensive report outlining how the error occurred and how it will be prevented in the future.

DMV Administrator Amy Joyce said an inquiry in July from a think tank called the Institute for Responsive Government prompted the agency to examine its voter registration process. According to a representative for the group, it had an informal phone call with the agency’s information systems office that involved “a high-level discussion on DMV voter registration modernization and best practices in ensuring accurate data.”

“The questions were, vaguely, sort of, ‘How’s it going and are you seeing any errors,’” Joyce told lawmakers in a legislative hearing last week. “That’s what keyed us off to say, ‘Well, let’s go see.’”

The revelations have created an opening for Republican lawmakers in Oregon to call for change. They plan to introduce legislation next year addressing the issue.