Press "Enter" to skip to content

Gov Brown, Sen Wyden don’t know that Oregon sells voter history files for $500?

These politicians should spare us their false outrage over Trump’s request for state voter info. Oregon’s Secretary of State (Brown was Secretary of State until Feb 2015) has sold this info online for years. It’s mostly used by political campaigns, such as those of Governor Brown and Senator Wyden, but it’s a public record and anyone can buy it.

The current file of ~3M names and their complete voting and registration history, including phone number, address, etc is just $500, order form here.

 

19 Comments

  1. Environmental necessity 06/30/2017

    Why should SoS spend resources helping Trump’s voter suppressing specialists? You think the GOPer SoS objecting are participants in faux outrage to hurt their president?.

    Do you have clue who Kobach and von Spakovsky are?

    Sometimes the liberal bashing on this site replicates the worst features of “now for amother perspective on gravity” false balancing in the media.

    It is most unfortunate.

    • UO Matters Post author | 06/30/2017

      You’re right, the government should only provide public records to the right sort of people, after ensuring they will use them for the best purposes.

      I apologize, I don’t know what I was thinking.

    • synecdoche 06/30/2017

      > Why should SoS spend resources helping Trump’s voter suppressing specialists?

      Because ORS 247.945(4) provides that “Upon request, the Secretary of State shall deliver to any person a statewide list of electors”, and Trumps voter suppressing specialists are some persons.

  2. Grebe 07/01/2017

    Not sure, but I think it is the request for the last 4 SSN which is the most controversial.

  3. honest Uncle Bernie 07/01/2017

    It would be very interesting to know how many Oregon voters are illegally registered. I have no idea what the number is, but I would bet it’s greater than zero. Is it a whole lot greater? Does anyone know? Is that not of interest? How many non-citizen adults, legal and illegal, are in Oregon? What fraction are registered to vote?

    If anyone wants to say that being concerned about possible illegal voting is “voter suppression,” they are welcome to say so.

    • UO Matters Post author | 07/01/2017

      Well, I caught Pernsteiner voting illegally – or at least registered illegally using Treetops as his address – and the Lane County Registrar sent him a strongly worded letter telling him to stop. His response is here: https://uomatters.com/2013/06/pernsteiner-evicted-from-treetops.html

      My guess is that’s one more illegal voter than the Trumpettes will ever find.

    • Vote for Pedro 07/01/2017

      It would be interesting to know! Luckily there are many political scientists who share your interest in this matter and have studied it extensively. In a recent article, Ansolabehere, Luks, and Schaffner conclude that “the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0.”

      But hey, why let careful academic research stand in the way of baseless conspiratorial claims that can be used to justify illegal voter suppression?

      • UO Matters Post author | 07/01/2017

        Got a link, buddy?

      • honest Uncle Bernie 07/01/2017

        Hey, there are other academic studies that reach dramatically different conclusions. Get out of your bubble and read.

        For my money, nobody really knows. How could they.

        But anyone who claims to know it’s zero, I’m very skeptical.

        Of course, it is all very soft science. Especially since it is so politicized.

        • Vote for Pedro 07/02/2017

          Nobody really knows, nor can they know. Ergo it’s a problem that needs to be addressed?

          You can’t base policy on teapot agnosticism, especially when said policy disproportionately affects a certain class (unless, of course, your goal is to disenfranchise). And by the way, there is only one serious study that supports your position, and the authors of that study have since recanted their findings. There’s no evidence beyond Breitbart and Twitter that this teapot exists.

          • honest Uncle Bernie 07/02/2017

            Nice try with the slander about wanting to disenfranchise.

            Unless you mean as in not wanting illegal voters to vote. I proudly stand accused.

            If there is only one serious study on this issue, that is a scandal, but not for me.

          • Oldtimer 07/02/2017

            To vote for Pedro, your ad hominems undermine your points, one or two of which I agree with. however, it is not true that the authors of the original study recanted their findings. They did make clear that some representations of their findings were incorrect and carefully worked through the arguments of their critics. I’ve read all the studies. You would do well to do so as well before arriving at conclusions. Here is one of the links from above to the most recent paper by the original authors. Anything but a recanting. The evolution of these papers is a good example of an academic exchange based on logic and evidence, unlike what one sees on breitbart or media matters,
            https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman/wp-content/uploads/sites/760/2015/11/AnsolabehererResponse_2-1-17.pdf

          • Salty 07/05/2017

            “disproportionately affects a certain class”
            Illegal aliens? Non-citizens? I’d say it affects them 100% proportionally. And legally. And morally.

  4. honest Uncle Bernie 07/01/2017

    Nice way to evade the issue of whether any of the tens of millions of non-citizens in the country are registering and voting.

  5. honest Uncle Bernie 07/02/2017

    Here’s a decent link

    https://www.wired.com/2017/01/author-trumps-favorite-voter-fraud-study-says-everyones-wrong/

    to one of the authors of the serious study mentioned in the thread here. A self-described moderate who seems interested in real facts and analysis. I find nothing in what he says to disagree with.

    The fact is, nobody has a very good idea of the extent of illegal voting, and that is alarming, and disgraceful too.

    Trying to dismiss the issue with sneers and slander is mot very smart, in more ways than one.

  6. maybe 1% 07/03/2017

    The Richmond study estimate was 1.3M total noncitizen voters (6.4 percent of 20.3 million noncitizens, quote below). There were ~130M total votes (Wiki). So, call the estimated noncitizen votes 1%- based on Richmond’s study, which has been criticized. The only other 1% Trump cares about plays a lot of golf.
    Whew, he had me SO worried, what with a big panel and all! I almost forgot about that Russian topic.

    ‘If 6.4 percent of the estimated 20.3 million noncitizens in the US voted, and if just 81.8 percent of them voted for Clinton (the percentage who voted for Obama in his [Richmond’s] 2008 study), that’s an added margin of a little more than 835,000 votes. In other words: Even with all of those supposedly fraudulent ballots, Clinton still would have won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes.’
    from:https://www.wired.com/2017/01/author-trumps-favorite-voter-fraud-study-says-everyones-wrong/

    • honest Uncle Bernie 07/04/2017

      A million fraudulent votes may be nothing to you, but I don’t see it that way. In some future election, it could be crucial, leading yo a real crisis of legitimacy. It is something that deserves more than one or two serious academic studies.

      The other stuff about golf, Trump, the Russians — please. (If there is really something on Trump, by all means let’s hear it.)

      • ONA 07/04/2017

        I was doing the same math and fell down the rabbit hole as 1% did above. In reading the original study and the rebuttal of Ansolabehere, Luks, and Shaffner (2015), there are a few items of note.

        First and foremost I think Ansolabehere and Shaffner are the owners of the original data and have been working with it for a decade. When the owner of the data calls bullshit I think that should cary a little weight. I am sure that if Ansolabehere could write the paper paper “MILLIONS of ILLEGALS collude to throw US election!” he would.

        Second and probably just as useful to remember: if you were going to throw an election a million random people usually located in your gerrymandered stronghold, is not the way to throw the election. It is much easier to use big data for extremely effective gerrymandering and voter suppression (removing voting machines)… Or just good old fraud by losing ballots (electronic with absolutely no audit trail or otherwise).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *