Oregon election officials have determined that the votes cast by nine people who did not prove their citizenship have not affected any election results in Oregon. (Ron Cooper/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
None of the Oregon residents who were automatically registered to vote without demonstrating citizenship voted in an election where they could have cast the deciding ballot, the state’s elections director told lawmakers on Wednesday.
That was the biggest news out of an hourlong hearing of the House Rules Committee, in which staff from the Secretary of State’s Office, the director of the Oregon Department of Transportation and the administrator of the department’s Driver and Motor Vehicle Services division explained how 1,259 people were automatically registered to vote despite not providing documents that proved citizenship when they interacted with the DMV.
In Oregon, as in every state except for Arizona, voters only need to swear under penalty of perjury that they’re citizens and eligible to vote when they proactively register to vote. Since 2016, the state has automatically registered people to vote when they obtain or renew driver’s licenses and state-issued identification cards if they present documents that prove citizenship, like a U.S. passport or U.S. birth certificate.