Kobach: New registration law in Oregon likely to increase vote fraud

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach says that a new automatic voter registration law in Oregon could potentially be “a perfect storm of errors” and could increase the likelihood of fraud.

Oregon will become the first state to automatically register people to vote after Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill Monday. The state, which conducts its elections by mail, will send any adult citizen who has not registered to vote but has interacted with the Department of Motor Vehicles since 2013 a ballot in the next statewide election as a way to increase voter participation.

The move is expected to add an estimated 300,000 voters to Oregon’s rolls, according to the Associated Press.

Kobach said he has been tracking the Oregon legislation. He said he supports each state’s right to form its own voting system but that it would be a mistake for Kansas to follow Oregon’s example.

“Oregon has taken a very different path than Kansas has. Kansas has arguably the most secure voting system in the country. It will be an interesting experiment to see what happens in Oregon,” Kobach said.

Since becoming secretary of state in 2011, Kobach has pushed several laws that he says make elections more secure. Critics say the laws put up barriers to voting, such as requiring a photo ID at the polls and requiring a person to provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

The proof-of-citizenship requirement left more than 20,000 potential voters in Kansas in suspended registration status last fall.

Kobach said Oregon’s automatic registration increases the likelihood of illegal immigrants being registered by mistake and creates the possibility of duplicate registration for people who change addresses or spell their names differently on their driver’s license than on their voter registration.

“I just think it’s a virtual certainty that they will see hundreds or thousands of people mailed two or more ballots, and that can be a very tempting situation where some people may succumb to the temptation to fill out both ballots and vote twice,” Kobach said.

The Oregon law puts the burden of registering a person to vote on the state rather than on the individual. Kobach said this responsibility should remain with the individual.

“With many rights, there is an element of personal effort and personal decision-making,” Kobach said. “With the right to vote, courts have ruled, that includes the right not to vote. It’s a part of your right not to do that, just like with the right to bear arms, there’s the right not to own a weapon.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2015 at 6:43 AM with the headline "Kobach: New registration law in Oregon likely to increase vote fraud."