Oregon 2020 election: No evidence of problem.

Oregon Elections Department reports on 2020 fraud complaints and investigations.

Result: 104 investigations, 99 warning letters, one referral for prosecution.

There is no evidence of widespread fraud in Oregon's 2020 election. One incident in 23,000 ballots cast.

Former President Trump laid the groundwork of citizen distrust of our elections. Prior to the election he said the election would be rigged against him by mail-in ballots. Especially dangerous, he said, were mail-in ballots sent to people unsolicited, as they are in the four states with universal mail-in balloting. Oregon is one of them. We were a potential ground zero for fraud.

The election will be "RIGGED," Trump tweeted. Mail-in ballots are "a whole big scam." He said that mail-in voting will make this the "most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history."  He tweeted “MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES.” 

Trump persuaded about a third of American voters.

What is the truth? The Oregon Secretary of State is able to address that doubt with data and public outreach. What kinds of fraud attempts are there, if any? She gets the complaints. She can count them and evaluate them and educate Oregonians and the country as to what "election fraud" really looks like.

Questionable ballots--ones that are unsigned, have uncertain signatures, or have some other problem--are examined at the county level by the County Clerks and sent to the Secretary of State when misbehavior is suspected. Jackson County's Chris Walker explained the complicated process of ballot bar codes signature reviews and tabulation, which this blog reported on August 6: Click. Jackson County referred 14 incidents. Statewide, County Clerks referred 103 complaints, according to Bob Roberts, an Investigations and Legal Specialist in the Department of Elections in the Oregon Secretary of State office. Ninety-nine of those cases were investigated and closed by the Secretary of State's office, all with the minor sanction of a warning letter. 

What about complaints from concerned citizens? The Election Department says there were five of these complaints, which are each examined to determine if there is any plausibility to them. One of the five met the plausibility test; the Department explained that "reports of election fraud do not necessarily rise to the level of a complaint." That one investigated citizen complaint is still "open," the Elections Department reports. Of the 104 cases referred by County Clerks, only three are still open, and one has been referred to the Oregon Department of Justice, which evaluates cases for possible prosecution.

Although the Secretary of State Shemia Fagan did not provide color or description of the kinds of cases evaluated, the Jackson County Clerk did. These are not truckloads of bamboo-infused fake ballots dumped anonymously into an election drop box, with fake bar codes inventing voters from names taken from graveyards. The descriptions of systematic fraud imagined by Trump did not happen. Instead, there were one-off incidents of dishonesty, typically a person voting the ballot of a deceased family member or one member of a household signing the ballot of another. This is illegal and it has the potential to change election results in a race with a tiny vote margin, but there is no evidence of massive, widespread, or coordinated anything. There were 2,318,000 votes cast in Oregon. There were 107 potential incidents of wrongdoing, 104 investigations, and 99 of them resolved with a warning letter. Investigated incidents are one vote in 23,000.

The 107 total cases reviewed by the Election Department do not constitute an unusual increase in citizen complaints or county referrals. For comparison, in 2018 they report there were 81 referrals by County Clerks, three non-plausible complaints by citizens, and two referrals to the Oregon Department of Justice--a ratio of problems generally in line with the total votes cast. 

Was there widespread voter fraud?  Was the Secretary of State buried by problems to investigate and refer for prosecution? 

No. The data show the opposite.

The Secretary of State has a comment:

Research efforts across the country and here in Oregon have already shown that widespread voter fraud is a myth. While Oregon has fared better than most of the nation, we are not immune to the challenges of misinformation and mistrust in elections. As Oregon’s Secretary of State, I'm working to build trust and ensure voters across the political spectrum once again have confidence in our elections.