Oregon removed voters off of ballots over lack of citizenship

Question

Oregon officials found over 300 voters, registered this month, that didn't have proof of citizenship. Due to a mix of laws being enacted that allowed "residents who aren't citizens to obtain driver's license", and "Motor Voter" law, which took effect in 2016, automatically registers most people to vote when they seek a new license or ID". This caused there to be a total of 1,561. "Thanks to the swift action of elections officials, I have full confidence that these new errors will not impact the 2024 election," Griffin-Valade said. However, other states have been finding lots of inelegiable names registered to vote. This is alarming especially in lue of the 2024 election in november.

"Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced in August that officials have purged 1.1 million ineligible names from the voter rolls since the 2020 presidential election. 

Ohio's secretary of state referred 138 noncitizens believed to have voted in previous elections to the state's attorney general for possible criminal charges."

These issues have been occurring in both automatic and non automatic voter registration states. Hopefully they will get fixed before the 2024 election.

Dorgan, M., & Fox News. (2024, October 8). Oregon mistakenly registered hundreds more voters without proving citizenship. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/oregon-mistakenly-registered-hundreds-more-voters-without-proving-citizenship

Answer 1

I also looked up if Oregon is having non-citizens try to enroll in voting this coming election. I think you did very well on providing details and numbers to back up your facts. It looks like it’s not just happening in Oregon. It’s also happening in other states like Ohio.

https://apnews.com/article/oregon-voter-registration-citizenship-07624f9087bd51eb283c4f25ec1f2a17

Answer 2

This does appear to be corroborated by several articles with independent interviews with government officials. There is also strong evidence of the issues occurring since the 2016 Motor Voter program's implementation. 

AP Article Interviews Oregon DMV Admin. Amy Joyce, who confirms and apologizes for the error.

Local KGW Article Includes comments from DMV and Governor Kotek as well as OR House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich.

Motor Voter Info - Oregon Secretary of State

It is notable that the Fox article, the issue being resolved isn't mentioned until the sixth or seventh paragraph. It could be misleading and lead one to believe that these invalid voter registrations are still active. 

Comments

I agree with you that the Fox article could be misleading, and thought the same thing until I looked more into it. I was skeptical for a moment to say that this claim is true, because it felt like an exaggeration, and almost suggests that the registrations aren't being removed or are wrongfully being inactivated.
Your answer and the articles you included are very helpful, though, to better understand the claim, and the related article's flaw. I appreciate that you included multiple sources, and explained who is corroborating the claim and how they are responding.

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Seeing that the source was Fox News did initially come across as misleading. However, I appreciate the corroborating sources that you provide. A good way to combat any potential media biases of passerby's. Further, you having linked to the KGW article to provide local insight really reinforces the topic at hand regarding non-citizen registration.

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I like that you corroborated sources across multiple sites to show that this was not an isolated article. However just because a narrative is stated on multiple sites does not necessarily make it factual

Answer 3

This does appear to be correct, there are numerous articles corresponding to the event with multiple having similar stories. This problem seems to have stemmed from the 2016 "Motor Voter" law which had taken effect in 2016 as confirmed by an ABC News article (in which they interview the Secretary of State of Oregon Griffin-Valade). This story has also been covered by AP News (which includes comments from DMV Administrator Amy Joyce) by stating the actual number of people found to have voted was an incredibly tiny fraction in comparison to the 3 million people voting. 

Comments

Owen_Puryear, I liked that you included some past legislation to validate this claim further. With situations like this, it's important to know the history behind these actions and how they inspire new laws.

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You raised some valid concerns, But I believe there is more to think about. A narrative is not always entirely trustworthy only because it is stated in numerous papers. News organizations occasionally report the same details without doing additional research. But the 2016 "Motor Voter" law is significant, it's necessary to consider whether there are any unresolved concerns, such as unintentional registrations of those who shouldn't be able to vote.  It's true that a relatively tiny percentage of voters cast invalid ballots, it could be beneficial to find out how they plan to ensure that this doesn't happen again. However your comment is valid, it might be strengthened by looking into these additional aspects.