Governor Tina Kotek has directed Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicle Services to take additional proactive steps to protect the integrity of Oregon’s Motor Voter program. Her new directive follows an already-resolved data processing error in a set of records transmitted to the Oregon Secretary of State.

“The integrity of election systems is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy, and any error that can undermine our voting system must be taken seriously and addressed immediately,” Governor Kotek said. “Following round-the-clock corrective action on the part of Oregon DMV to address the known errors and ensure they will not impact the 2024 general election, I am now directing the agency to go above and beyond to ensure errors like this will not happen again.”

In a press release, Governor Kotek says that she has directed Oregon DMV to:

• Provide updated training immediately to all relevant staff on the full set of corrective actions in response to the errors.
• Undertake and complete a comprehensive After Action Report within 14 days to determine how the errors occurred, document the corrective actions taken, and provide an explanation of why the errors will not occur again.
• Initiate a full-scale data integrity review overseen by a panel of external data experts to produce preliminary recommendations for improved data management by the end of 2024. The recommendations must include staff training improvements to ensure staff have every available resource to succeed.
• Establish a data quality control calendar in coordination with the Oregon Secretary of State to ensure due diligence ahead of elections.

In response to Governor Kotek's press release regarding the Oregon DMV's automatic voter registration system errors which led to 1,259 non-citizens being wrongfully placed on voter rolls, Senate Republican Leader Daniel Bonham (R-The Dalles) issued the following statement:

“While I appreciate Governor Kotek’s directive to the DMV to take proactive steps to avoid further errors with the state’s motor voter program, it’s not enough. The only reason we know about the DMV registering 1,259 non-citizens to vote is because a national think tank started asking questions. This tells me that there’s probably much larger, systematic issues at play. For Governor Kotek to suggest that this is the only necessary action to clean up our voter rolls suggests that she’s more focused on managing appearances than solving real problems.”

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Leader Bonham emphasized that Governor Kotek still needs to direct the Secretary of State to audit all voter registrations to ensure that Oregon's voter rolls are accurate.

House Republicans also reiterated their call today for a public briefing on non-citizen voter registrations as the number of reported non-citizen registrations increased by over 400% over what was initially reported. Despite requesting the briefing multiple times, as of this release, House Republicans have not received a formal update on steps being taken to address this issue.

“A press announcement is no substitute for an open and public hearing,” said House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich (R-Hood River). “Oregonians deserve full transparency about how this happened. We must have a public hearing.”

“It is disappointing that we are all here in Salem this week to do our jobs, but we have no Legislative Rules Committee scheduled to hear from the Secretary of State’s office on this issue,” said Rep. Anna Scharf (R-Amity). “I have personally read in the papers conflicting reports of how this problem was even detected. We need clear answers from the Secretary of State on what the current plan of action is moving forward so that this never happens again.”

House Republicans will introduce legislation to safeguard our elections in the 2025 session.


--Staff Reports

Post Date: 2024-09-23 16:16:28

Last Update: 2024-09-23 16:43:03