Oregon elections officials describe controls, audits after DMV data errors; automatic voter registration file transfer resumes

Deputy Secretary of State Michael Kaplan and Elections Director Dina Dawson told the Oregon House Committee on Rules on March 3 that the Secretary of State’s Office, the Department of Transportation’s Division of Motor Vehicles and ODOT have put new controls and reviews in place after identifying data errors in the Oregon Motor Voter (OMV) transmission and related registration records.

The office of Secretary of State told the committee the OMV file transfer — paused after the governor’s directive last year — resumed on Feb. 26, and that the agencies are using monthly sampling, manager review and other controls while an external audit and additional reviews continue.

The resumption matters because counties need accurate registration and address data to assemble ballots and run the May election. Officials told the committee they are balancing the urgency of delivering files to counties with longer-term remediation and auditing work.

Kaplan said the Secretary of State is treating integrity, accountability and competence as the guiding principles for the elections division and that the office is “not partisan” in operational work. “We just need a little bit of time to try and get it right,” he told lawmakers, adding the office is working “as fast as we can.”

Dina Dawson, who took the job as elections director about a month before the hearing, outlined the division’s programs and priorities and flagged several large projects: replacing the statewide voter registration and election management system (OCVR), implementing House Bill 4024’s campaign finance tracking requirements and analyzing and modernizing automatic voter registration with ODOT and DMV. Dawson said the elections division has 35 full‑time staff and is directly managing multiple major IT projects, a campaign finance investigations backlog and strained working relationships with some counties.

DMV Administrator Amy Joyce told the committee that DMV staff reviewed about 1,400,000 OMV‑related records after discovering data problems in 2024…