Online voter registration coming to Oregon

Secretary of State gives Clackamas County commissioners a progress report

By Matthew Graham

The Clackamas Review, Nov 3, 2009, Updated Nov 6, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown met with Clackamas County Officials last week to update them on what she’s working on, with changes to the state’s referendum system the hottest topic of discussion.

Brown was elected to her current position last year, beating Republican Rick Dancer and Pacific Green Party candidate Seth Woolley. She said she ran on three main issues, and told the commission they’re still the ones she’s primarily working on.

The areas are fixing, or “restoring integrity to,” the referendum system; engaging the public and getting more people registered to vote; and improving performance auditing for publicly funded agencies in the state.

To get people more involved and to increase the number of registered voters Brown is implementing an online registration system. She said there are between 550,000 and 600,000 unregistered Oregon voters and that voting rates are higher in states with same-day registration. Oregon requires registration 21 days before an election. But she said online registration should help increase the number of eligible voters.

The move is also meant to reduce office work costs and should be more secure than the current system.

When County Chairwoman Lynn Peterson asked about online voting, Brown said she’s not convinced the technology is ready. She has concerns about security and a paper trail to verify votes.

“I literally won my first race by seven votes,” she said. “I had to wait 30 days for a recount and it was wild because I could sit there and watch as they did the recount … online voting hasn’t really addressed that issue for me.”

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