Elon Musk, the Tesla founder and prominent former federal agency gutter, blasted on social media Monday that Oregon has “a lot of fake voters,” citing another user’s post on his X platform.
But his claim was itself fake news, based on a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of Oregon’s voter rolls.
It’s true that Oregon has 800,000 voters listed in its voter database who aren’t eligible to vote – at least until they provide new proof they are, primarily by updating their addresses. It’s also true that 800,000 people equate to nearly 25% of Oregon’s 4.2 million or so residents.
But those nearly 1 million Oregonians aren’t fake people or people who were not eligible to vote – and they haven’t been sent ballots, so there is no basis to fear they’ve cast illegitimate votes. They are or were real citizens living in Oregon who registered to vote but were subsequently switched to “inactive” status because their county elections director got an indication their registration was out of date.
So the Tweet on the X platform from a relatively unknown Twitter personality with the moniker Upstate Federalist that Musk amplified was factually flawed.
The existence of 800,000 inactive voters on Oregon’s voter list came to light from a dispute between the Trump administration and Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, Oregon’s top elections official, that dates back to August.
Oregon currently has 3 million active registered voters out of its roughly 3.4 million voting age adults, a high share due in part to its automatic voter registration for anyone who obtains or renew a state ID or driver license at the DMV. Elections officials send them ballots and encourage them to vote in every primary and general election.
Read has conceded, including last week, that Oregon has an additional 800,000 inactive voters on its rolls and that some or many of them should be removed. These former voters may have moved out of state, changed their names or signed a ballot in a way that didn’t match their previous signature, according to Read spokesperson Tess Seger.
Oregon needs stronger rules to guide county elections clerks, who are responsible for updating and purging voter rolls, to cancel out of date registrations, Read’s office has said. But the office’s failure to remove inactive voters, who aren’t sent ballots and therefore can’t vote without proving their address or other evidence of eligibility, has had little to no practical effect, they have said.
The latest salvo from the Trump administration to try to discredit Oregon elections officials and the sanctity of Oregon voter rolls will be heard in federal court in Eugene Wednesday morning. The administration sued Oregon to force it to explain its failure to purge inactive voters and compel it to turn over personally identifiable information about all its voters, among other issues.