Oregon election officials said Monday they had struck off over 1,200 people from the state’s voter rolls.
Officials determined the ineligible people did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship when they were registered to vote.
The disclosures come amid heightened scrutiny of voter rolls nationwide as the presidential election nears.
Only nine of the people struck off voted in elections since 2021, the Oregon secretary of state’s office said.
An election worker sorts submitted ballots at the Multnomah County Elections Office on Nov. 2, 2020 in Portland, Oregon. Over 1,200 people were removed from the state’s voter rolls, officials announced on Monday, after determining they did not provide proof of U.S. citizenship.
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
County clerks are working to determine if they were ineligible when they cast their ballots or just had not provided the correct documentation, said Molly Woon, the office’s elections director.
Republicans have raised concerns about the possibility that immigrants may be voting, however state data indicates such cases are rare.
Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested migrants are being signed up to vote after arriving in the U.S. despite American citizenship being required to vote in federal elections.
During a speech in January Trump said his political opponents were “allowing these people to come in, people that don’t speak our language, they are signing them up to vote.”
Last month, Texan authorities rejected a claim by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that migrants were being registered to vote outside a number of Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) facilities across the state.
In Oregon, the nine people who did not confirm their citizenship represent a fraction of the state’s 3 million registered voters.
10 people were found to have voted after being improperly registered, but one was later confirmed to be eligible, authorities said.
The secretary of state’s office has notified the 1,259 individuals who were improperly registered by letter.
These people will not receive a ballot for the 2024 election unless they reregister and provide documentation proving their citizenship.
The deadline to register to vote in Oregon is Oct. 15.
The error partly stemmed from Oregon’s policy allowing noncitizens to obtain driver’s licenses, with the state’s DMV automatically registering most individuals to vote when they get a license or ID.
According to authorities, DMV staff can inadvertently select an option that codes an applicant as having a U.S. passport or birth certificate, even when they presented a foreign passport or birth certificate.
Both elections and transportation officials stated that the DMV has taken steps to address the problem.
The U.S. passport option is no longer the default setting in the registration system, and an additional prompt has been added for staff to confirm the document type.
Office managers are also now conducting daily quality checks to ensure document entries match the scanned documents, authorities said.
On Monday, Gov. Tina Kotek urged the DMV to implement further measures, such as updated staff training and a coordinated data quality control calendar with the secretary of state’s office.
Kotek also called for a detailed report outlining the causes of the errors, the corrective actions taken, and how such issues will be prevented in the future.
Oregon Republican lawmakers, who sent a letter to Kotek last week urging action to protect the integrity of the state’s voter rolls, have called for a public hearing on the matter.
Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade assured that the error would not affect the November election.
This issue mirrors problems in other states.
Texas removed 6,500 noncitizens from the Lone Star State’s voter rolls ahead of the 2024 presidential race in August.
A Texas newspaper accused Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican officials in the state of “hurting our democracy” by claiming that there is widespread election fraud among noncitizen voters.
Alabama, Arizona. Louisiana, Ohio and Virginia have all taken similar action.
Last week, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled that nearly 98,000 voters, whose citizenship documentation had not been verified, could vote in state and local elections.
Most of them were voters who registered long ago and attested under the penalty of law that they are citizens.
In August, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Republican effort that sought to prevent over 41,000 Arizona voters from casting ballots, though it allowed parts of a law requiring proof of citizenship to remain in effect.
State and federal laws prohibit noncitizens from voting in local and national elections, including individuals with legal status, such as green-card holders, student visa holders, tourists, temporary workers, and those without legal status.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press
