In a major win for election integrity advocates, the Department of Justice has sided with Judicial Watch in a lawsuit against the Oregon Secretary of State over the state’s failure to follow federal law requiring transparency in how it maintains its voter rolls.
The DOJ filed a Statement of Interest on Friday, in the case Judicial Watch v. Read, confirming that Oregon cannot hide behind its counties or bureaucratic red tape to avoid its clear legal responsibilities under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
The case centers on Oregon’s refusal to hand over public records detailing efforts to clean up its voter rolls — including lists of people sent confirmation notices and whether they responded — as mandated by Section 8 of the NVRA.
Judicial Watch and other plaintiffs allege that Oregon’s Secretary of State, Tobias Read, failed to make a reasonable effort to remove ineligible voters from the rolls and unlawfully withheld critical records from public inspection — a violation that could conceal voter fraud and election mismanagement.
In a stunning rebuke of Oregon’s handling, the DOJ’s legal filing emphasized that states, not counties, are directly responsible for maintaining and disclosing these records.
Oregon’s own response to Judicial Watch’s 2023 records request admitted that fulfilling it would take 5,000 hours due to lack of central coordination.
The DOJ made clear: this is no excuse.
“To the extent that the state does not have in place and must fashion ad hoc methods to access and retrieve the records from the counties and ensure the records are preserved for at least two years, the state’s laws and practices would not be consistent with the state’s obligations under the NVRA,” the DOJ wrote.
The DOJ warned that any state law attempting to delegate those responsibilities to local officials must yield to federal law under the Constitution’s Elections Clause.
Hellbound and Down 