Concerns Are Raised In Josephine County

Election integrity is of great concern to some Josephine County residents who worry mail-in voting is easy to hack and that the machines used to count ballots in Oregon counties are vulnerable to manipulation.

Some people are so concerned they invited David Clements to the recent Patriots Conference at the Josephine County Fairgrounds. Clements was a professor at New Mexico State University until a dispute there ended his teaching career but launched his fame as an election denier. He told his audience in Josephine County that he wants to hear them talk “until they fall over dead” about rigged elections, rigged software and those mail-in ballots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoVnNteZR_Q

Are our elections rigged? There are a variety of ways to find out.

There are many conspiracy theories involving voting, especially in Oregon, which has had mail-in voting since November 7, 2000, when it became the nation’s first all-vote-by-mail state, according to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Elections Division.https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/statistics/vote-by-mail-timeline.pdf

The Secretary of State’s website has an entire section devoted to showing how secure Oregon elections are and answering questions about election integrity. https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Pages/security.aspx

According to The Oregonian, voter fraud does happen, but it’s rare, and election offices have safeguards to catch it. And when it’s caught, fraudsters are prosecuted.  https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/10/voter-fraud-does-happen-but-its-rare-and-election-offices-have-safeguards-to-catch-it.html

Oregon’s voter registration data is public, not how they voted but who voted.  See for yourself here. https://data.oregon.gov/Administrative/Voter-Registration-Data/8h6y-5uec/about_data

Misinformation and misunderstandings are more dangerous to our elections than voting fraud. Mistakes can be made, but that isn’t fraud. There are many resources where you can assess Oregon’s election integrity. Charismatic partisan election deniers may be entertaining, but they aren’t highly rated as sources of accurate information about election integrity.