Resident criticizes state removal of 'inactive' voters and urges county-level roll cleanup

Mary Halkiopoulos told the Washington County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 20 that recent state directives to remove roughly 800,000 "inactive" voters from voter rolls do not address larger problems she says affect more than 3 million active registrations in the state.

Halkiopoulos cited a 2025 audit by Baker Tilly and a DMV disclosure that she said showed 62,949 registrations of individuals of unknown citizenship status between Jan. 1, 2021, and Oct. 18, 2024. She argued that removal of inactive records does not address noncitizen, deceased, duplicate or otherwise ineligible records and urged returning voter registration management to the county level.

During her remarks she referenced the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and questioned prior changes to Oregon's cancellation language and its implementation. She told the board that confirmation-card and cancellation procedures required by federal law must be followed and that some recent state directives and messaging are "misleading." The board thanked her for communicating concerns to state officials as well as the federal delegation.

No formal action on voter-roll management was taken at the meeting.