The Justice Department just put Oregon election officials on notice that they could face criminal prosecution if they allow noncitizens to vote in federal elections.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon sent a letter to Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read. The letter cautioned that officials could face criminal charges if they knowingly keep noncitizens on voter rolls or help them vote in federal elections.
The letter notes that federal laws make it a crime for election workers to allow ineligible people to cast votes. It gives Read five days to provide an explanation for how it will adhere to the law regarding elections.
This is another desperate attempt by Trump to make it harder for Oregonians to vote this November because he hasn’t been successful in overturning vote by mail. I will fight this with everything I’ve got. https://t.co/543BP13Bhv
— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) July 8, 2026
The letter lays out the exact duties state officials are required to perform under laws like the Civil Rights Act, National Voter Registration Act, and Help America Vote Act. The law requires states to remove people from voter rolls when they pass away, move, or are deemed ineligible.
There is no evidence that anyone in Oregon is deliberately helping noncitizens vote. However, Oregon ran into serious problems with its Motor Voter system in 2024. It’s the automatic program that registers people to vote once they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state ID. Clerical mistakes, faulty computer entries, and tech issues resulted in about 1,937 people ending up on the state’s voter rolls without showing proof that they were U.S. citizens.
Yesterday, I received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice stating that the federal government was ready to prosecute and imprison me and other elections officials and renewing their attempts to unlawfully meddle in Oregon elections. Here's my response: pic.twitter.com/3IXli8rW0e
— Secretary of State Tobias Read (@ORSecretaryRead) July 8, 2026
The errors compounded over following years. However, state officials checked the records and found that only 43 of these individuals ever voted in elections. But of that group, “many of them were citizens,” the Secretary of State’s office reported. None of the votes impacted the outcome of any election.
Oregon officials quickly removed or inactivated the faulty registrations so the people could not receive ballots or cast votes. The Secretary of State’s office investigated the 43 cases and closed almost all of them without filing charges because it was the result of a DMV paperwork errors rather than actual efforts to vote fraudulently.