Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read鈥檚 office last week forwarded three cases of suspected voting by noncitizens to the state鈥檚 Department of Justice for further investigation. Elections officials are still looking into seven additional people who might have voted illegally after they were registered to vote in error, the office said Monday.
It鈥檚 illegal for people who aren鈥檛 U.S. citizens to vote in Oregon. And voting despite knowing you鈥檙e not allowed is punishable by up to a year in jail.
鈥淚 instructed my administration to submit these three cases to the Oregon Department of Justice because we must protect the integrity of our elections,鈥� Read said in a statement to OPB on Monday. 鈥淭he public needs to be able to trust that our laws are being followed. Only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote in our elections.鈥�
The Oregon DOJ confirmed it had received a letter from Read鈥檚 office on Friday, but said it hasn鈥檛 determined whether to open investigations.
The potential prosecutions are the latest development in a story that has roiled the state鈥檚 elections system since last summer. Beginning in September, officials at the state鈥檚 Driver and Motor Vehicles division revealed that staff error had led to more than 1,600 people being registered to vote in Oregon when they shouldn鈥檛 have been.
Oregon has more than 3 million registered voters.
Under the state鈥檚 Motor Voter law, instituted in 2016, people are automatically added to the voter rolls when they get a new state ID, as long as they show proof of citizenship.
But DMV officials said last year that some people had erroneously been registered despite showing foreign passports or birth certificates. State workers also mistakenly registered people born in American Samoa, though they aren鈥檛 automatically U.S. citizens.
The problem surfaced under Oregon鈥檚 previous secretary of state, LaVonne Griffin-Valade, that the number of possible noncitizens who ultimately voted after being registered in error was vanishingly small, and could not have swayed the outcome of an election.
But the errors have ramped up scrutiny of the state鈥檚 voter registration system. That鈥檚 particularly true of Republican lawmakers, who are that could change or dismantle the motor voter law.
Read, too, has been highly critical. Since taking office last month he has promised to build new safeguards into the system, but to date has not offered any details about changes he鈥檒l enact.
The specter of prosecuting people who were registered to vote through no fault of their own has troubled some Democrats. In a hearing last year, lawmakers like House Majority Leader Ben Bowman, D-Tigard, worried that people could be prosecuted or have their path to citizenship blocked because of the state鈥檚 mistake.
鈥淭hose folks did not ask to be registered. They did not ask to have a ballot mailed to them,鈥� Bowman said. 鈥淲hat is being done to ensure that those individuals are not harmed because of actions taken by the government, not by them?鈥�
Oregon鈥檚 former elections director, Molly Woon, told lawmakers at the time that her office would provide letters of 鈥渘o fault鈥� upon request, verifying errant registrations were the state鈥檚 responsibility alone.
