Oregon, My Oregon

From NewsMax, Oregon Removes Over 1,200 Voters for Failing to Prove U.S. Citizenship

Oregon elections officials said Monday they had struck over 1,200 people from the state's voter rolls after determining they did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship when they were registered to vote.

Of those found to be possibly ineligible, only nine people voted in elections since 2021, the Oregon secretary of state's office said. County clerks 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, said Molly Woon, the office's elections director.

The disclosures come amid heightened scrutiny of voter rolls nationwide, from Oregon to Arizona and Texas, as the presidential election nears. Citing an influx of immigrants in recent years at the U.S.-Mexico border, Republicans have raised concerns about the possibility that people who aren't citizens will be voting, even though state data indicates such cases are rare.

In Oregon, for example, the nine people whose citizenship hasn't been confirmed and who cast ballots represent 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.

I do wonder how they checked, and how thoroughly they looked for non-citizens voting. But I'll give them a little credit for at least making a nominal effort. 

The secretary of state’s office sent letters to the 1,259 people who were improperly registered to let them know their registration had been inactivated. They will not receive a ballot for the 2024 election unless they reregister with documents proving their citizenship. The state's deadline to register to vote is Oct. 15.

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. When DMV staff enter information in the computer system about someone applying for a driver's license or state ID, they can incorrectly choose an option in a drop-down menu that codes that person as having a U.S. passport or birth certificate when they actually provided a foreign passport or birth certificate, authorities said.

The DMV has taken steps to fix the issue, elections and transportation authorities said.

When I lived there, Oregon did not have a large population of immigrants, illegal or otherwise. I suspect, being a blue state, they have largely been spared in the Biden/Harris open borders era.