Election Fraud in Oregon. Did it happen here?
There are good questions that deserve good answers:
Was the Oregon election free and fair?
Was there fraudulent activity?
Were fraud reports investigated?
What did authorities find out?
The Secretary of State's office studiously evaded answering. Strange.
Normally one would expect the office of an elected official to be eager to show the official to be on the job and effective. Oregon has universal mail-in balloting, and former President Trump said vote-by-mail was rife with fraud. A lot of people believe him. Is he right? Was Oregon's 2020 election packed with fraudulent ballots and illegal votes? What are the facts?
My local election official, Jackson County Clerk Chris Walker, told me she found a total of 14 cases of potential forgery, plus four cases of ballots cast in the names of people who had died--18 votes out of 128,000 cast in the county.
Walker, interviewed on KOBI
Walker told me she referred these problem ballots to the Oregon Secretary of State for investigation and potential referral for prosecution. If vote problems in Jackson County are representative of the state as a whole, we might expect about 350 problems statewide, but that would be a guess. I wanted to report facts from the source. I asked for a brief phone interview with Oregon's Secretary of State Shemia Fagan. Her office declined an interview, but said if I had questions, I should submit them in writing. I thought I was friendly and clear. Here is what I wrote:
Thanks for your help. I would appreciate an “on the record” response. I will use your comments in my daily political blog, UpClose with Peter Sage Https://peterwsage.blogspot.com
I have a small readership of about 2,000 daily readers. Oregon-oriented articles are the most popular. Most of the readers are politically active Oregonians, primarily in the Democratic/older/donor demographic.
1. Have you had any reports of fraudulent voting in the 2020 general election?
2. If so, what was the disposition of those reports/referrals?
3. The Oregon Department of Justice said they prosecuted few cases (under 100) involving the 2018 election. Is it standard practice for the SOS to refer potential cases to them?
4. How does 2020 compare with 2018?
5. Is there a database you could refer me to of election fraud investigations and prosecutions or some other disposition?
6 Have you had “citizen referrals” i.e. reports by concerned citizens of election violations in 2020, and if so, what did the SOS office do in response.
With all the talk of massive voter fraud and the supposed riskiness of mail-in ballots, I wonder what the Oregon data show. I expect readers will wonder, too.
Peter Sage
I honestly thought the Secretary of State's office would be eager to be helpful. This was an opportunity to clear the record on Oregon's elections with real data. The elected Secretary of State could show herself to be hard at work, both addressing the question of whether there was, in fact, widespread fraud in he election, and also giving detail and color to the kinds and quantity of election misbehavior that does take place. She could show her competence in having an office that investigated and prosecuted fraud, thus assuring the public our elections are secure. I assumed this information would be prime press-release material.
Instead, I got evasion and resistance. Apparently it will take the Secretary of State's office some four hours to research if they got fraud reports, report how many, and to determine whether the office processed them. They requested $100, or about four hours' time at $25/hour. I doubt this is about the money, even though, of course, I am happy to pay it, and more. This is about information stonewalling. This is about putting up a bureaucratic wall against an outside inquiry about what her office learned about election fraud in Oregon. With all the accusations, speculations, and wild conspiracies circulating, the Secretary of State has the facts at hand to bring everyone back to reality--important work--but the response from her office is to reveal as little as possible.
When asking if the office got complaints, the answer was yes. When asked how many, the question was ignored. When asked for comparisons with prior elections, the response was "an increase." It was as unhelpful as a bureaucracy could make it.
Michael Trigoboff, a Portland-area reader of this blog, saw a copy of the letter from the Secretary of State's office, and commented: "She could have saved herself a lot of typing, and saved you a lot of time reading, by just replying, “Fuck you.'" That seems too harsh to me. It wasn't overtly hostile. It was a bureaucratic wall, but it was civil, even if oddly and persistently evasive and protective. The office sent the firm message that the Secretary of State's office was revealing as little information as possible about its work.
Is this simply the instinct of a government bureaucracy when a question comes from an unfamiliar direction? Is there some problem that needs to be hidden, e.g. are they way behind in their work? Can the Secretary of State's office be blind to the fact that overt stonewalling raises a red flag of suspicion in an arena where there is already speculation about hidden, nefarious behavior?
Here it is, verbatim. I will let readers decide what they think is going on. I put my questions in italics and the responses in bold, to make clear which words were whose:
Good morning, Mr. Sage:
I’m writing in response to the questions you sent over to us. We can provide a more thorough answer through additional research, which would cost you approximately $100 based on our fees for providing public records under OAR 165-002-0010. Please let me know if you would like to proceed with more in-depth answers and for which questions you would like those answers.
Please see below for the answers to the questions you provided:
1. Have you had any reports of fraudulent voting in the 2020 general election? Yes.
2. If so, what was the disposition of those reports/referrals? Reports of election fraud were assessed, and a determination made as to whether the reports rose to the level of a colorable complaint. Complaints must be from an individual registered to vote in Oregon and the complaint must be signed. Complaints are also referred to the Elections Division by filing officers, such as a county elections official. Disposition of complaints arising from the 2020 general election range from closed to open to currently being worked by the Oregon Department of Justice (DOJ).
3. The Oregon Department of Justice said they prosecuted few cases (under 100) involving the 2018 election. Is it standard practice for the SOS to refer potential cases to them? The Elections Division refers colorable complaints of voter fraud to the DOJ.
4. How does 2020 compare with 2018? There was an increase in complaints alleging voter fraud during the 2020 general election. Please note that there was also an increase in voter turnout [67.8% in 2018 vs 78.5% in 2020].
5. Is there a database you could refer me to of election fraud investigations and prosecutions or some other disposition? The Elections Division does not have a public-facing voter fraud database containing this information. Complaints involving voter fraud are kept confidential pending final disposition.
6. Have you had “citizen referrals” i.e. reports by concerned citizens of election violations in 2020, and if so, what did the SOS office do in response? Referrals from citizens are processed in essentially the same manner as referrals received from county election officials. All colorable complaints are investigated.
Thank you,
Carla Axtman
Carla Axtman
Communications Director
Oregon Secretary of State