Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said Trump ‘is clearly actively working to corrupt our elections’

By Bryce Dole, Oregon Public Broadcasting

President Donald Trump said Monday that he will lead a campaign to end mail-in voting.

The president wrote in a post on his Truth Social account in all capital letters that mail-in ballots are a “scam” and that elections can “never be honest” with them in place. He said without evidence that voting by mail leads to widespread voter fraud.

Oregon and Washington have long used vote-by-mail in elections with no widespread evidence of fraud. The states each began tests of mail-in ballots in the 1980s before later adopting them statewide.

In his post, Trump also vowed to get rid of voting machines and expressed a preference for watermarked paper ballots. He pledged to sign an executive order on the matter before the midterm elections.

The comments came after Trump arrived back in Washington, D.C., after meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine. In a recent interview on Fox News, the president said Putin questioned the honesty of mail-in voting during that meeting.

The president’s remarks drew criticism from Oregon Democrats on Monday. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden posted on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, “Now Donald Trump is taking advice from Vladimir Putin on how to conduct elections?”

“How about Trump ask voters here in Oregon and other states with vote-by-mail how it’s long been proven as a secure, effective & easy way for Americans to vote from home?” Wyden wrote.

In an interview with OPB, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read decried the president’s statements, saying Trump “is clearly actively working to corrupt our elections.” Barring an act of Congress, Read said the federal government does not have the authority to end mail-in voting.

“The Constitution is very clear,” he said. “States run elections.”

A Democrat who was elected in November, Read also rebuked the president’s statements on Fox News, adding: “Despite what Putin apparently whispered into President Trump’s ears, our vote-by-mail elections are secure and accurate.”

“Voter fraud is extremely rare, and it’s never changed the outcome of an election,” Read said.

Stopping this system would disproportionately impact rural and elderly voters, Read said, “because mail-in voting meets citizens exactly where they are, in their living rooms, around their kitchen tables.” It would force elections offices to hire poll workers and prompt people to seek child care or take time off work to vote, Read said.

“I’ve now talked to 30 of our 36 county clerks, and every one of them recognized that a move like this would be more expensive, would be less effective, would mean that it’s harder for eligible Oregonians to hold politicians accountable,” said Read. “We should not be moving in that direction.”

Oregon’s electoral system faced scrutiny from state Republican leaders over the past year amid revelations that the state’s Motor Voter Program — which automatically registers people to vote when they get a new driver’s license — erroneously added more than 1,600 possible noncitizens to voter rolls. There are more than three million registered voters in Oregon.

Those issues emerged in the run-up to Read’s election in November. He defeated Republican opponent, former state Sen. Dennis Linthicum, who claimed that the state’s vote-by-mail system was susceptible to fraud. Some Oregon Republicans have continued to question the system’s integrity.

“Since Oregonians passed vote-by-mail, the legislature has passed Motor Voter and other legislation that compromises its integrity,” Sen. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford, said in a statement to OPB Monday.

Brock Smith noted that he proposed two bills to change Oregon’s voting laws during this year’s legislative session, including Senate Bill 210, which would have made “in-person voting on the date of an election the standard method for conducting an election.” Each bill died.

“Thousands of Oregonians are concerned with our elections and SB 210, that I also drafted last session, would have given Oregonians the opportunity to elect to keep vote-by-mail or not,” he said.

The Trump administration recently targeted Oregon and other states by asking them to prove the state is doing enough to ensure ineligible people don’t vote. The U.S. Department of Justice asked Read and his office for sensitive information, including details of people who’ve been deemed ineligible to vote and a roster of state elections officials.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Tina Kotek said, “Oregon’s electoral system is one of the most secure, effective, and accessible in the nation.”

“The Governor will fight to protect the access to democracy that Oregon has celebrated for years,” Roxy Mayer, the governor’s press secretary, said Monday.

About 75% of registered Oregon voters returned their ballots during this year’s general election, topping the national average of about 64%.

Bryce Dole covers Oregon politics and government for OPB. He previously worked for newspapers in rural Eastern and Central Oregon. This article first appeared on opb.org.