Oregon: Redistricting Task Force Wants To Strip Power From Lawmakers | KUOW

A task force created by Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson is recommending that future redistricting be done by an independent commission. That would be a significant change from the current model, which tasks Oregon lawmakers with drawing up a plan. Redistricting is the process of drawing new legislative and congressional districts to match shifts in population. It takes place every 10 years, following the U.S. Census. Oregon’s next redistricting will occur in 2021. The current method of allowing lawmakers to draw the maps is “susceptible to political manipulation,” Richardson wrote in a newsletter announcing the task force report. “There is an inherent conflict of interest in allowing legislators to draw their own districts and pick their own voters.”

Oregon: Elections offices reject votes due to ‘non-matching’ signatures | Clackamas Review

Oregon City’s Roxane Riseling said it was “very weird” to get a letter from the elections office for her daughter Megan saying that signatures didn’t match after the September police-bond measure; the same thing happened to both the mother and daughter in two different recent elections, and they say that their signatures “haven’t changed.” Clackamas County has some of the highest proportions of ballots being rejected because county elections officials determine that the voter’s signature on the ballot doesn’t match their registration card.

Oregon: Legality of Oregon Secretary of State Richardson’s election rule change questioned | The Register-Guard

A change in the rules for collecting initiative petition signatures in Oregon, proposed by Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, may be on shaky legal ground, according to a preliminary analysis by the Legislature’s lawyers. Richardson, a Republican, wants to let the backers of initiative petitions start gathering signatures before their ballot title — the neutral, summarized descriptor of what the measure would do — is finalized. Under current practice, backers must wait until their ballot title is approved by either the Oregon attorney general or the state Supreme Court, a process that can be lengthy due to legal disputes about what wording is the most accurate and fair.

Oregon: Richardson alters policy on selling voter registration lists | Portland Tribune

Secretary of State Dennis Richardson said Thursday that he plans to change the type of voter registration information that is publicly available after receiving a second request from President Trump’s election integrity commission. Richardson said the commission’s June 28 request for specific — and not all publicly available — information about Oregon voters raised privacy questions and prompted “a full legal and policy review.” He announced a new policy that covers the kind of voter registration information a political party or organization can purchase from the state. “Balancing the need for both privacy and transparency is a critical challenge in the internet age,” Richardson said.

Oregon: Oregon’s electronic, accessible ballots may soon be available in other states | StateScoop

States may soon have another option for accessible ballots as an HTML ballot provider for 36 counties in Oregon considers service in new states. Five Cedars Group, which creates downloadable HTML ballots for the blind and disabled, is undergoing certification in California and also considering expansion to Ohio, both of which have faced voting discrimination lawsuits related to accessibility. The move marks a pattern of states looking toward new technological capabilities to address compliance issues with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), a law passed following the 2000 presidential election that ensures all voters have the ability to cast secret ballots privately and independently.

Oregon: Legislature OKs letting 16-year-olds pre-register to vote | KTVZ

Oregon continues to lead the way in expanding voter access with the passage Monday of Senate Bill 802 which gives 16-year-olds the ability to pre-register to vote. Under current Oregon law, an otherwise qualified person who is at least 17 years of age may pre-register to vote. This legislation will lower that to age 16 so that Oregon is able to include, as part of the Motor Voter law, the nearly 20,000 16-year-olds who are licensed in Oregon every year. Without this change, it could take another eight years before those individuals again interact with the Department of Motor Vehicles and are automatically registered.

Oregon: New Report Analyzes Impact of Oregon’s Automatic Voter Registration | The Skanner

A new report released today by the Center for American Progress’ Liz Kennedy and Rob Griffin, along with voting experts Tova Wang and Professor Paul Gronke, provides a demographic and geographic portrait of how Oregon’s automatic voter registration system (AVR) — the first in the nation — has expanded the state’s electorate and registered hundreds of thousands of eligible citizens to vote. The findings of this exclusive new analysis provide strong evidence in favor of AVR, not only given the increase in people registered to vote and voters, but also how the program has succeeded in making Oregon’s voter rolls more representative of the state’s population by registering younger, less urban, lower-income, and more ethnically diverse individuals. The report is accompanied by a robust set of graphics and charts as well as a video and an interactive map that brings the story to life by showcasing the regions and communities that benefited the most from AVR, displaying both the percentage of AVR registrants in an area as well as their participation rates on election day.

Oregon: Congressional Democrats Push For National Vote-By-Mail | OPB

Oregon’s six Democrats in Congress want to spread the state’s vote-by-mail law across the country. Both of Oregon’s senators and four U.S. representatives announced the introduction of a bill Thursday that would require “every state to provide registered voters the opportunity to vote by mail,” according to a statement. The bill summary promises that Congress would cover the postal costs for implementation. The Democrats argue vote-by-mail would help increase voter participation — in contrast to efforts at the state and federal level that they characterize as suppressing the vote.

Oregon: Richardson unveils plan to reinstate inactive voters | The Oregonian

Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson on Tuesday announced plans to reinstate thousands of Oregon voters on the inactive list and keep thousands more from lapsing into inactive status. Under current law, Oregon voters are given inactive status and are no longer mailed a ballot if they haven’t voted in at least five years. Richardson is proposing an administrative rule change to keep voters from landing on the inactive list until ten years of not voting. In his first press conference since being elected secretary of state, Richardson, a Republican, said the rule change would reinstate at least 30,000 voters and keep another 30,000 from going inactive.

Oregon: State to spare 60,000 voters from inactive status | Statesman Journal

In Oregon — where its first-in-the-nation automatic-voter registration system has been hailed as a pioneer in knocking down voter-access barriers — it takes just five years of failing to participate in an election before a registered voter gets knocked from the active voter rolls and no longer receives a ballot in the mail. Roughly 400,000 registered Oregonian voters have been flagged as inactive at some point in time, a number that this year is expected to grow by another 30,000 who registered during the 2012 general election when President Barack Obama was up for re-election. For Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, five years isn’t long enough. So this year, he’s doubling that timeline to 10 years.

Oregon: State looking at making ballots free to mail | Statesman Journal

Do Oregon voters fail to return their ballots because of the price of – or inconvenience of obtaining – a postage stamp? Two Democratic legislators think in a significant number of cases, the answer is ‘yes.’ They’re backing a bill to provide postage on mail-in ballots, at a cost to taxpayers of about $650,000 per year. “We know there are ballots out there that are not getting in,” Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, told the Senate Rules Committee on Monday. “We would like to remove the impediment that is there for some people to mailing their ballot that has to do with the postage stamp.”

Oregon: America’s First Test of Automatic Voter Registration, in Oregon, Has Mixed Results | Governing

Nearly 100,000 Oregonians who otherwise may not have voted cast ballots in the Nov. 8 election after registering to vote in the state’s new automatic voter registration program, Democratic Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins said. Nearly 43 percent of voters who registered automatically after visiting a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office voted. That’s a lower rate however, than the 79 percent who registered by mail and through the secretary of state’s website. Many states were eyeing Oregon which was the first to start automatically registering voters in an attempt to encourage more residents to vote.

Oregon: Groups help Oregonians with disabilities to vote | Oregon News Service

More than 800,000 Oregonians are living with a disability, and this week the attention is on making sure they have an opportunity to vote. It’s National Disability Voter Registration Week, and groups including Deaf People United and the Autism Society of Oregon are assisting with voter registration and voting efforts among the disability community. Esther Harlow, voting rights advocate for Disability Rights Oregon, said it’s an important week. “It’s making sure that everyone understands that people with disabilities have a right to vote in Oregon,” she said. “Regardless of whether they have a guardian, regardless of whether they can read their ballots, they still have that right to vote.”

Oregon: Voter Registration surges | The Chronicle

The June data report for the Oregon Motor Voter program shows over 200,000 new records sent to Oregon’s counties for processing since the program took effect on January 1, 2016. Release of the June report coincides with the completion of Phase II, a separate phase of the Oregon Motor Program, in which 145,000 eligible, unregistered Oregonians received OMV cards in the mail giving them the opportunity to become automatically registered voters. Of those, over 120,000 Oregonians will be sent to Oregon’s 36 counties to be processed for voter registration. “It is clear that Oregon Motor Voter is changing the nature of voter registration in Oregon as we know it,” Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne P. Atkins said. “With completion of the second and final phase of implementation for the program, I’m looking forward to Oregon Motor Voter becoming the norm for Oregonians.”

Oregon: State expects to automatically register more than 200,000 new voters ahead of November election | The Oregonian

Oregon is on track to sign up more than 200,000 new voters in the first seven months of the state’s automatic voter registration system, the Secretary of State announced Friday. Most of those voters — approximately 120,000 — will be registered through the second phase of the program, in which the Secretary of State’s office identified eligible voters who visited the DMV in 2014 and 2015. County clerks are now registering those people to vote. Under the first phase of the law, the Secretary of State’s office and county clerks were already registering people who visited the DMV this year on a rolling basis.

Oregon: County judge who blocked refuge occupiers survives recall election | The Tribune

Residents of a remote county in eastern Oregon where an armed group seized a federal wildlife refuge have voted overwhelmingly to keep in office a top local official who had denied the occupiers access to a county building. “I feel so good about the outcome,” Harney County Judge Steve Grasty told The Associated Press over the phone from the county courthouse in Burns. “The voters have spoken. What’s important is to move ahead, see where is the common ground … People won’t always agree but we can find what we can work on together.” Grasty had faced the special recall election Tuesday because he refused to let the activists, who said they were protesting federal land-use policies, use a county building to host a meeting. Supporters of the recall say Grasty violated rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Oregon: Switch in ballot procedures has some worried about secrecy | The Oregonian

Ever since Oregon approved voting exclusively by mail in 1998, Hasso Hering took comfort that a sealable “secrecy envelope” would guarantee his right to a private ballot. So when the 72-year-old from Benton County opened his ballot for the May primary, he was confused to see a non-sealable “secrecy sleeve” instead. Benton is among at least five Oregon counties, including Multnomah County, Marion County, Deschutes County and Washington County, to trade sealed envelopes for sleeves in hopes of speeding up ballot counts while still protecting voters’ privacy. But voters such as Hering worry the change could make it easier for elections workers to put a name to a ballot marking. “It is a principle of our ballot,” said Hering, a retired journalist. “How you vote is your business and no one else’s.”

Oregon: Town braces for recall election after standoff | Associated Press

Voters in a rural Oregon town are receiving ballots in the mail for a recall election targeting a judge who opposed the armed takeover of a federal wildlife refuge earlier this year. Harney County Judge Steve Grasty decided to fight the recall even though he is retiring this year. The recall has stirred passions in Burns, which held the national spotlight for weeks during the standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Ammon Bundy and others occupied the refuge this winter to protest federal land policy and the imprisonment of Dwight and Steven Hammond, two ranchers sent to prison for starting fires. The 41-day standoff ended Feb. 11 and included the fatal shooting by police of rancher and occupation spokesman Robert “LaVoy” Finicum.

Oregon: Oregon elections official details ‘motor voter’ impact | KTVZ

Two weeks after a record number of Oregonians voted in the state’s May primary election, the Oregon secretary of state shared data Wednesday on voter turnout and the state’s pioneering Oregon Motor Voter program. “I am encouraged to see these new ‘motor voters,’ many of whom may have never voted before, engage in the democratic process,” said Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins. “We have received positive feedback from many Oregonians and continue to hear praise from national civic organizations and other states that are looking to Oregon as a model for democratic engagement.” According to the most recent analysis by the state Elections Division, 8,135 votes were cast by Oregonians who were registered through the Oregon Motor Voter program. With 43,571 eligible OMV voters, this means 18.7 percent of the OMV-registered voters who were eligible to vote on May 17th (registered by April 26th) participated in the primary election. Read the full report here.

Oregon: Portland tech firm Galois spins out new company to make elections more secure | Portland Business Journal

Portland computer science research and development firm Galois is taking aim at election security with its latest spin-off, Free & Fair. The new wholly-owned subsidiary is run by elections security researcher Joseph Kiniry, who two years ago illustrated how easy it is to hack vote-by-email systems, and is based on technology developed by Galois. To start, Free & Fair has three products:

A tabulator, which is a secure and verifiable ballot scanning system.
The ePollbook, which is a scalable and secure electronic poll book for precincts and county voting centers.
A supervised voting system, which is a complete polling place system based on the STAR-Vote project. That project is a collaboration between academia and Travis County (Austin), Texas to create a secure, reliable and auditable voting system.

Oregon: Automatic Voter Registration in Oregon Is Revolutionizing American Democracy | The Nation

Oregon’s presidential primary is tomorrow, but the bigger story is how many new voters there are in the state. More than 100,000 new voters have registered so far in 2016, over half through the state’s new automatic voter registration system. The 51,558 voters signed up through automatic registration is an average of 12,889 new voters per month, three times higher than the average of 4,163 monthly registrants in 2012. “It looks like it’s going to be a big success,” says Nikki Fisher, executive director of The Bus Project, which helped conceive of the program. The number of voters registered has been higher than initial projections and half of new registrants are under 35. “All indications are that new people are being brought into the system,” Fisher says. This year Oregon became the first state to automatically register eligible citizens who request or renew a driver’s license through the DMV. They are sent a card informing them of their registration status and have 21 days to opt out from the voting rolls. The burden of registration shifts from the individual to the state.

Oregon: Automatic Voter Registration a Success, With a Hitch | Associated Press

Oregon’s landmark new automatic voter registration system added nearly 52,000 voters in just four months this year, more than double what the state has normally seen for an entire year. That sounds impressive, but there’s a hitch. The so-called “motor voter” law — a first in the nation widely hailed as a way to boost voter participation — hasn’t made it much easier to participate in Oregon’s closed primary on Tuesday. Unlike the November general election when all voters can participate, the presidential primary in Oregon and some other states is restricted only to voters who are registered as Republican or Democrat. Under the new law, Oregonians 18 and up are automatically registered to vote while renewing or applying for a driver’s license or state ID card, but they can’t pick a party at that time. Instead, they’re registered by default as nonaffiliated, and a few days later they can choose a party or opt out on a form sent by mail.

Oregon: What’s illegal in Oregon voting and what’s not | The Oregonian

Statutes pertaining to Oregon election laws run for pages and pages. But, for the most part, voter fraud and related illegalities are exceedingly rare, according to Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne P. Atkins. “I’ve been in this job since last March (2015),” she said. “And I’ve had only four or five of those come across my desk. I’d call it a relative rarity.” What scant voter malfeasance exists almost always involves one family member signing the ballot envelope of another — something that’s strictly prohibited by law. “You just can’t sign someone else’s ballot,” she said, “regardless of how well intentioned it may be.”

Oregon: Ballot problems in run-up to primary | The Bulletin

Oregon may have been first on the vote-by-mail train, but that doesn’t mean the ­system doesn’t have kinks. Each primary election, county clerks send out thousands of extra ballots to voters who wait until the last two weeks before the deadline to join a party or make other changes to their registration. This year has been no different. The problem? With more than 2 million ballots to send, clerks have to work ahead of time to package the ballots up for mailing. While the deadline to register, change parties or ask for an Independent Party ballot was April 26, clerks already had prepared millions of ballots, leading thousands statewide to receive a first ballot with their old information and a second ­ballot with the new. High interest during this presidential election has amplified the issue, as voters have flocked to join the major parties to vote in their primaries. County clerks and Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins say the system is working fine, and there’s no need to fear that votes will be counted twice.

Oregon: Double ballots? It’s OK. Just fill out the second one, officials say | The Oregonian

Be warned if you changed your political party — like thousands of Oregon voters — right before the state’s April 26 deadline. Elections officials say the ballot that hit your mailbox this week is almost certainly the wrong one — full of races from the party you switched from, and not the one you switched to. That’s likely true for anyone who submitted a change after April 13. But don’t fret about losing your chance to vote. Updated ballots, correctly assembled, are already on the way, officials promise. If you haven’t sent back the first one (most Oregonians tend to wait), then all you have to do is sit tight, wait for the replacement and vote before May 17 like you normally would. Even you voted promptly, officials say, fill out the new ballot and send that one in, too. That’s the one they’ll count.

Oregon: State on track to register drivers to vote next year | Associated Press

Oregonians who get their first driver’s license or renew an existing one next year will automatically be registered to vote. Officials from the secretary of state’s office said Monday that they’re ready to begin implementing a law approved by the Legislature earlier this year. Beginning Jan. 1, people who are issued a driver’s license, are U.S. citizens and are old enough to vote will receive a postcard in the mail that lets them choose to join a political party or opt out of registration. If they don’t opt out within three weeks, they’ll automatically join the voter rolls and will receive a ballot in the next election.

Oregon: Ballot scanner to ‘revolutionize’ Oregon vote tally | KOIN

A new vote tabulation system in Multnomah County will “completely revolutionize the way we process ballots,” said the county’s election director Tim Scott. On Tuesday, the county unveiled the ClearVote system which will scan both sides of a ballot at once and then create an image. The system will also be able to count about 4000 ballots an hour instead of the current pace of 1000 per hour. If there is a questions over a voter’s intent, a bipartisan group will work to determine what the voter meant, and do it in a separate room.

Oregon: Credit Oregon with Hillary Clinton’s Plan to Expand Voting Rights | Bloomberg

Hillary Clinton wants to make Oregon the model for her proposal to expand access to the ballot box. On March 16, Oregon became the first state in the nation to make voter registration automatic. The legislation, known as the “Motor Voter” law, will use information collected at the state Department of Motor Vehicles data to automatically register eligible voters. Speaking in Houston Thursday, Clinton cited Oregon’s example and said automatic registration should go national. Signing her state’s registration law, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, said, “I challenge every other state in this nation to examine their policies and find ways to ensure that there are as few barriers as possible in the way of a citizen’s right to vote.” Brown introduced in the bill January while Oregon secretary of state, and became Oregon governor the following month.

Oregon: Multnomah County voters can track ballot delivery in May | The Oregonian

Do you like tracking packages when you buy things online? Try it with a ballot for May’s special election. Multnomah County will offer a service that tracks ballots and notifies voters whether they were accepted or rejected. Voters can visit a county website to receive text, email and phone messages. The pilot program will be offered by i3ballot at no cost to voters or the county. Participants will be surveyed after the election, said Tim Scott, Multnomah County’s director of elections. The pilot will track delivery from the county to the participant and the ballot’s return trip through the Postal Service. People who take ballots to drop boxes or specified locations, such as a library, will be notified after processing, Scott said.

Oregon: Should unaffiliated voters get a role in party primaries in Oregon? | The Oregonian

House Majority Leader Val Hoyle wants to figure out how to give the growing number of non-affiliated voters a voice in the state’s partisan primaries. The Eugene Democrat said it’s an issue that is gaining urgency. The percentage of voters who don’t register by party has more than doubled since 1990, with 24.5 percent now registered as non-affiliated. In addition, under Oregon’s new motor voter law – which automatically registers people using driver’s license data – the number of unaffiliated voters is expected to rapidly climb in the next several years.