Oregon secretary of state race heats up with news of noncitizens being added to state voter rolls

Published 11:30 am Monday, September 23, 2024

Perhaps the most glaring distinction between the two leading candidates for Oregon secretary of state is where they fall on the very basics: how Oregonians vote.

Democratic nominee Tobias Read would like to see Oregon’s vote-by-mail serve as a national model, while Republican Dennis Linthicum recently filed a lawsuit questioning the validity of mail-in voting.

Four years ago, former President Donald Trump raised issues about absentee voting and falsely claimed the election was stolen. Conservatives have echoed those concerns, which have largely been dismissed by Democrats.

But in recent weeks, revelations that Oregon mistakenly registered at least more than 1,000 noncitizens to vote injected a new level of intensity in an otherwise relatively drama-free statewide race for Oregon secretary of state. Linthicum has seized on the issue.

“It’s no longer a conspiracy that illegal immigrants can successfully register to vote in Oregon,” Linthicum recently told OPB. “But now they actually have, so our conspiracy theory has turned from hot air to fact and I bet you it’s a lot more than 306 … I bet you it’s 10 times that number.”

There is no evidence that the people mistakenly added to the voter rolls are in the United States illegally nor that they intentionally registered to vote. They were passively registered through the DMV’s automatic voter registration law, known as motor voter law.

This story was originally published by Oregon Public Broadcasting and used with permission.OPB is a news partner of this publication. Read the rest of the story on their website, opb.org.