Oregon DMV Mistake Added 118 More Non-Citizens to Voter Rolls with At Least 13 Casting Ballots in Elections

Over 1,700 non-citizens may have been erroneously registered in Oregon to vote in the presidential election last year, but the DMV estimated on Friday that at least 13 of these individuals could and did vote in at least one election.

Non-Citizens Voting In Oregon

In yesterday’s report, the DMV admitted it mistakenly allowed 118 people who were almost certainly non-citizens to register to vote, taking the total of non-citizen voters to 1,700 after lax processing and human error added hundreds of Oregon non-citizens to the voters roll.

The DMV noticed the error after116 after the people it had registered to vote subsequently showed the agency proof of identity, such as a foreign passport or a green card, which confirmed they were not citizens.

While most errors occurred last year, the DMV has since implemented new guardrails on its automatic voter registration system, correcting the error.

However, one error occurred after the new protocols were implemented, and the DMV indicated that at least 13 of these non-citizens voted in at least one election.

The steps taken to rectify the incorrect registration of non-citizens on the voter roll in Oregon include:

• The Secretary of State’s Office is reviewing these individuals’ voting records to determine whether they voted illegally or if they had become citizens after being mistakenly registered—before they voted.
• The Association of Oregon County Clerks will ensure that no registered non-citizens will receive ballots for upcoming local elections.
• The DMV now requires staff to enter a state and county for all U.S. birth certificates.
• DMV managers must now verify that documents submitted for identification match their entries in the department’s system at the end of each day.
• The DMV reviews a random sample of automatic voter registration records monthly and checks in daily with the Secretary of State’s office.

Four Oregon House Republicans responded to the report by announcing plans to introduce legislation to reassign automatic voter registration from the DMV to the secretary of state as early as next week. However, the bill would likely face opposition from Democrats.