Oregon election authorities to begin clearing 800K inactive voters from its voter rolls

Oregon election officials are expected to begin removing hundreds of thousands of inactive voters from the state’s registration rolls as the country gears up for the 2026 midterm elections later this year. 

The Justice Department has pushed states to clean up their voter rolls ahead of the Congressional midterms by removing inactive, non-citizen or duplicate records from their systems. 

Oregon's Democratic Secretary of State Tobias Read said last week that the state is expected to purge 160,000 of its 800,000 inactive voters from the registry immediately, after they failed to meet the criteria to keep their registration active. There are currently over three million active voters in Oregon.  

"These directives are about cleaning up old data that’s no longer in use so Oregonians can be confident that our voter records are up-to-date," Read said. "From day one, our goal was clear: run elections that are secure, fair, and accurate. This move will strengthen our voter rolls and reinforce public trust in our elections."

The 160,000 inactive voters have had that status since 2017, but Read's office emphasized that inactive voters do not receive ballots and therefore did not vote in or impact recent elections.

The election official also directed county election officials to update their voter confirmation cards to include a warning that voter registrations will be canceled if individuals do not act before two general federal elections have occurred.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.