Oregon Voter-Roll Complaint Doesn’t Stand Up To The Facts

Last Week, former State Rep. Jeff Kropf, Voting Restrictionist Ruth Bendl, Jim Ludwick, President of anti-immigrant group Oregonians for Immigration Reform and anti-tax activist Jason Williams held a press conference about their beliefs that Oregon's Voter rolls are saturated with voters using “false addresses, improbable or impossible birth dates and ones allowed to register without showing any proof of identification”. They cited examples such as thousands of people registered to vote at one address to birth dates like 11/11/1111 printed on voter registration cards.

According to The Oregonian, Secretary of State Bill Bradbury’s office responded the following day saying that “The examples provided Thursday did not appear to show anything out of compliance with election laws”. They added saying that, “The examples included many inactive voters, who are listed in the two-year-old statewide voter database but are not among the nearly 2 million Oregonians who are eligible to vote”.

In an Albany Democrat Herald article yesterday, State Elections Director John Lindback disputed all claims by the group as "unfounded". Addressing the issues the group discussed in their press conference, Lindback added that the group of four never approached his office about the so-called problems saying, "I wish we could get them to talk to us, but they shoot first and ask questions later”.

The press conference held by the group of four last Thursday was a failed attempt to play on anti-immigrant sentiment to bash Oregon's Voter Registration process and the successes of Vote-By-Mail. With Anti-immigrant Initiative #112 having a provision which would eliminate Oregon’s current process regarding registering voters, the group was clearly hoping to generate interest as a "fix" to all the now unfounded problems they cited in their press conference. Unfortunately for them, Mr. Lindback skewered them with the facts.

Posted in: anti-immigration,Jason Williams,Jeff Kropf,Jim Ludwick,Oregonians for Immigration Reform,Vote-by-Mail,Voter Registration,voting rights