Overview
- Oregon’s secretary of state announced on Jan. 9 that elections officials will cancel about 800,000 inactive registrations accumulated since routine maintenance paused in 2017.
- Inactive records are separate from more than 3 million active voters, did not receive ballots, and, according to the state, have not affected past elections.
- Fact-checkers rejected social-media claims that the removals revealed 20% “fake” voters, noting the process is standard list maintenance required by law.
- A senior aide to Secretary Tobias Read said the cleanup was a priority before he took office and declined to comment on ongoing litigation.
- The action comes as the Justice Department has sued Oregon and other states over voter-list data and as ERIC reports millions of outdated or duplicate registrations nationwide.