PORTLAND, Ore. — Over 300 more people were found to have been mistakenly registered to vote by the Oregon DMV through the state's "Moter Voter" program. The agency said a technical error led to thousands of records to go unanalyzed.
Both Governor Tina Kotek and Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade have called for an independent audit of the Oregon DMV's Moter Voter program following these revelations.
Kotek also directed the Oregon DMV to pause transmitting Moter Voter data to the Secretary of State's office until the completion of the audit at the end of the year.
After first-learning of the improper registrations on Aug. 1, around 953 voter registrations have been inactivated on top of the 306 originally flagged, for now a total of 1,568.
The new batch of records were identified following a two-week investigation by the DMV into its own system at the direction of Kotek. The after-actions report identified 302 additional records that have been sent to Oregon's Secretary of State for inactivation.
Of those registrations, 123 records were due to a clerical error — the same one that inadvertently registered hundreds to vote. These records were original missed in an "earlier hand review" due to a technical issue in the way the file was labeled, the DMV said. It was discovered on Oct. 1 and led to 3,151 records to be hand reviewed.
Another group of records, 178, were found involving residents of the U.S. territory of American Samoa and Swains Island. While these residents use a U.S. passport, they are not eligible to vote in some elections, a citizenship law unique to these territories, the DMV said. It had been DMV policy to identify these individuals as U.S. citizens, making them eligible for automatic voter registration.
"That policy was incorrect," the DMV said.
This discovery was made following a media inquiry from Willamette Week on Oct. 2, the DMV said.
“By agreeing to an external audit," said Jeff Helfrich, R-Hood River, Oregon House Republican leader. "Democrats have conceded that something is systemically wrong with Oregon’s automatic voter registration system. House Republicans welcome this audit, as we have called for it since the onset of this scandal. Every effort must be made to complete it and remove all ineligible voters from the rolls before the November election. Oregonians deserve safe, secure elections.”
One additional record was also caught through the DMV's new quality control measures — but after it was sent to Oregon's Secretary of State to be registered to vote. It's now policy that all records are reviewed by a manager to catch any clerical errors. In response to one slipping through, the DMV said it's adjusting its policies to ensure it won't happen again.
“Two weeks ago, we believed we had all of the information to project confidence that we understood and had reviewed all records at risk of error,” said DMV Administrator Amy Joyce. “We have since learned this confidence was misplaced based on new information outlined in this announcement and after-action report and for this, we are sorry."
On Sept. 30, the Secretary of State stopped automatically registering voters through Oregon Motor Voter.
The DMV said that it has since implemented some corrective actions, including managers reviewing work, changes to the computer system that aim to reduce human error, more training and a change to the review process when processing documents from American Samoa.
“Any error that undermines our voting system must be taken incredibly seriously and addressed,” Kotek said. “Given the findings in the Oregon DMV’s After-Action Report, an immediate, external audit of the Oregon Motor Voter program and a pause to data transmission between the Oregon DMV and SoS [Secretary of State] are imperative steps to ensuring the program can operate with integrity and accuracy into the future."
