Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read on Thursday flatly rejected a demand from the U.S. Justice Department to turn over troves of voter data, writing that doing so could violate Oregonians’ privacy rights.
In July and last week, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice demanded that Oregon turn over a wide range of information, including the full name, date of birth, residential address and driver’s license number or partial Social Security number for every Oregon voter. They also asked Read to explain how Oregon maintains voter rolls.
In a response letter Thursday, Read said he saw “no federal authority” for the Justice Department’s request for voter data.
Some of that data is public record, and anyone can obtain a copy of a statewide voter list with a records request and a $500 fee. But those lists cannot include any voter’s birthday, Social Security number or driver’s license number.
“Oregon allows for public access to certain voter-registration data, including a voter’s residence address and birth year, for a fee,” Read wrote. “There is no exception for the federal government.”
He did provide the names of Oregon’s last few statewide election directors and the county clerks who have handled elections since November 2022. Most day-to-day election work occurs at the county level, with elected nonpartisan county clerks or appointed election directors registering voters, mailing ballots and processing returned ballots. The Secretary of State’s Office enforces state election law, oversees county work, collects data and leads routine post-election audits.
The July letter from the Justice Department described Oregon’s voter registration as “unusually high for several years,” as a report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission noted that 95.3% of citizens 18 and older living in Oregon were registered to vote ahead of the November 2024 election. Nationally, just 73.6% of adult citizens were registered to vote, according to census data.
Oregon has long prided itself on making voting accessible. Since 2016, the state has automatically registered adult citizens to vote when they obtain or renew driver’s licenses or state ID cards at the Motor Vehicle Services Division, and the number of registered voters rose to more than 3 million in the near-decade since the law took effect.
The state also regularly leads the nation in voter turnout, though turnout rates have declined since automatic voter registration added more voters to the rolls. Last year’s presidential election had a 75.4% turnout in Oregon, down from the 2004 peak of 86.5%, but well above the national 65.3% rate.
The Justice Department also questioned why Oregon removed fewer registered voters from voter rolls than the national average, and ordered Read to share full voter registration information for anyone removed from voter rolls because they were determined not to be a citizen, deemed incompetent by a court or convicted of a felony. In Oregon, people convicted of felonies temporarily lose the right to vote but regain it as soon as they’ve completed their sentences.
“I am not aware of anything in the (National Voter Registration Act of 1993) or (Help America Vote Act of 2002) that would require this,” Read wrote. “And with respect to disclosing the registration information for ineligible voters in particular, that would both exceed my obligations under federal law and almost certainly violate state law.”
Read was more explicit in a July email to Justice Department officials who asked for a data-sharing agreement, saying that he was uninterested in sharing information with federal officials who hadn’t demonstrated that they would protect the U.S. Constitution that he and they swore an oath to uphold.
“I have no interest in sharing data with an administration that is willfully violating judicial orders and trampling on constitutional rights and responsibilities,” he wrote. “Nor do I wish to share data with an administration that appears to take glee in snatching people off the streets without requiring its agents to properly identify themselves or provide arrest warrants, or with an administration whose agents wait outside of day care centers, schoolyards and courthouses to improperly detain and deport Oregonians.”