State Representative Anna Scharf (R-Amity) sent a letter to Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the Administrator for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at the U.S. Department of Human Services, urging her denial of automatic voter registration to Medicare recipients in Oregon.

“The CMS has the authority to stop this, and they should until Oregon can prove the registration process is secure and will only register eligible voters,” wrote Scharf.

Representative Scharf serves on the House Rules Committee where this legislation was heard during the 2023 Legislative Session. Scharf raised many questions during the hearings, many of which were left unanswered by the Secretary of State’s Office and the Oregon Health Authority.

“During the hearing on HB 2107, there was little discussion regarding data security with respect to sharing needed information across platforms,” Scharf wrote. “How would OHA determine if the 170,000 people were legal US Citizens prior to registering them? How would the OHA system gather that data and then tie it to the SOS office?”

Representative Scharf highlighted Oregon’s recent history with public data breaches, most recently at the Oregon Health Authority where 1.7 million Oregon Health Plan members had their private information leaked. Scharf stated the automatic voter registration does not provide for an “opt out” option, but rather automatically shares that individual’s information with the voter registration program.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

“I strongly urge you to consider delaying the waiver to the State of Oregon for this data sharing until they can prove there is no other way to register these recipients AND that they can keep any data transferred by OHA to the SOS secure from breaches,” wrote Scharf.


--Staff Reports

Post Date: 2023-08-24 19:29:30

Last Update: 2023-09-16 16:27:55