The Oregon DMV has allowed 1,259 non-citizens to register to vote since 2021, a fourfold increase from the agency’s previous estimate, state officials said Monday.
Non-citizens are prohibited from voting in national or local elections. But earlier this month, the DMV acknowledged that it had found at least 306 instances in which employees mistakenly coded non-citizens who presented foreign passports or birth certificates when applying for a driver’s license or ID as having a U.S. passport or birth certificate.
That number shot up to 1,259 this week following a complete investigation by the DMV, according to Kris Strickler, director of the Oregon Department of Transportation, which oversees the department.
“While we regret this situation has occurred, we moved swiftly to correct the issue before the coming election and implemented swift corrective action to ensure the data processing error will not impact the (November) election or future elections,” Strickler told reporters Monday.
Ten of the non-citizens have voted in an election, according to Ben Morris, chief of staff for Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade.
However, it’s unclear how many of those 10 were ineligible to cast a ballot because they became a citizen by the time they voted, Morris said. The Secretary of State’s Office already confirmed that one of those individuals legally voted after becoming a U.S. Citizen.
For nearly a decade, Oregon has automatically registered to vote anyone who obtains or updates a driver’s license or state ID and isn’t already a voter. That changed in 2021 after Oregon lawmakers authorized driver’s licenses for undocumented residents. The DMV instituted a system to make sure only citizens’ information got sent to the state elections division to be registered to vote.
The DMV only realized that it had mistakenly helped register non-citizens to vote after it conducted a review in response to inquiries from The Institute for Responsive Government, a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on making governments more efficient and accessible.
DMV Administrator Amy Joyce told reporters earlier this month that her agency had a two-step process for verifying that license applicants had a U.S. passport or birth certificate but has since added a third step after learning of the data errors.
Strickler said the agency is preparing for an external review, but did not specify who will conduct the review.
“We are looking at bringing forward kind of an external review that would then look at the DMV data processes and the analysis associated with ... the data entry procedures to really give us best practices from other places in the country,” he said.
Gov. Tina Kotek said Monday that she had directed the DMV to implement processes to ensure that non-citizens aren’t mistakenly registered again in the future.
“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,” Kotek said in a statement.
Since learning of the error, the DMV has taken several steps to correct the issue, officials said. The department now requires staff to enter a state and country for all U.S. birth certificates. It also now requires DMV managers to verify that documents submitted for identification match their entries in the department’s system at the end of each day.
“Automatic voter registration at the DMV remains the most trusted and secure way for engaging more eligible voters in our democracy,” Morris said. “While any error needs to be taken seriously, and we are taking this issue very seriously, we can take some comfort in the fact that this system is generally working correctly.”
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