The Trump administration is wading into a court fight over whether Oregon does enough to scrub its voter rolls of ineligible voters.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would file a 鈥渟tatement of interest鈥� in an ongoing suit between a number of conservative plaintiffs and the Oregon Secretary of State鈥檚 Office.
The U.S. DOJ says it is watching the case closely for signs Oregon violated a federal law, the National Voter Registration Act.
鈥淎ccurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in Oregon are conducted fairly, accurately, and without fraud,鈥� U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement. 鈥淪tates have specific obligations under the list maintenance provisions of the NVRA, and the Department of Justice will vigorously enforce those requirements.鈥�
Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read declined to comment on the filing Friday, citing ongoing litigation.
鈥淲hat I can say is that we take our responsibility to maintain secure, accurate voter rolls seriously,鈥� Read said in a statement. 鈥淥regonians want and deserve fair and free elections, and we must do everything in our power to deliver.鈥�
The Oregon Department of Justice said it was researching the matter.
At issue is a lawsuit filed in October by the national conservative group Judicial Watch, along with the Constitution Party of Oregon and two individual Oregonians, Suni Danforth and Hannah Shipman.
The suit made two central allegations. The first is that Oregon isn鈥檛 following the 1993 federal law by proactively scrubbing dead or ineligible voters from its voter rolls.
That claim is based, in part, on a from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. According to the suit, that report showed, 19 of Oregon鈥檚 36 counties had not removed any voters from November 2020 to November 2022, and that 10 other counties had removed 11 or fewer people in that time.
鈥淚n all, these 29 counties reported a combined total of 2,404,849 voter registrations as of November 2022,鈥� the complaint read. 鈥淵et they reported removing a combined total of 36 registrations in the last two-year reporting period.鈥�
The second claim had to do with a public records dispute. The plaintiffs say they requested documents that detail notices the state sent to voters, requesting that they verify their voter registration information. Under the federal law, those are supposed to be kept for two years and freely inspectable to the public.
But the plaintiffs say former Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade鈥檚 office told them their request would take roughly 5,000 hours to complete, because different counties kept the records in different ways.
The suit contends that is a violation of federal law, and it鈥檚 this question that the U.S. DOJ is most interested in.
鈥淪tates cannot insulate themselves from those responsibilities by delegating them to counties or local authorities, even if subdivisions of the state have some role in carrying out tasks in furtherance of NVRA responsibilities,鈥� the Trump administration wrote in its filing with the federal court.
The federal interest comes at a potentially pivotal moment in the Judicial Watch-led lawsuit.
Attorneys with the Oregon Department of Justice have asked U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane to dismiss the lawsuit. They argue that the conservative plaintiffs don鈥檛 have standing to bring the case, and that they didn鈥檛 give the state legally required notice of the alleged public records violation.
Oral arguments in the matter are set for June 18.
Trump has made election security a focus of his second term in office. In March, he i that would, among other things, require submitting a proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. That order is caught up in.
OPB reporter Lauren Dake contributed to this story.
