ALL THE BEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME THIS NEVER HAPPENED: Automatic voter registration let non-citizens in South Dakota, Oregon onto voter rolls, report says.

A report released by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) last week shows that both South Dakota and Oregon, which have automatic voter registration, found non-citizens on their respective voter rolls last year. The report explains that this occurs easily and warns states about using automatic voter registration.

In October, South Dakota found that 273 non-citizens were incorrectly on state voter rolls due to automatic voter registration through the state’s department for issuing driver’s licenses.

After South Dakota used the U.S. Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) to check the citizenship status of the 273 registered voters, the non-citizens were informed that the state had corrected the errors and that they would be removed from the voter rolls, according to the PILF report. The non-citizens were also notified about how to re-register to vote after becoming U.S. citizens.

South Dakota implemented automatic voter registration after a lawsuit filed in 2020 on behalf of Native American tribes regarding the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was settled two years later, per the report.

Oregon was the first state to implement automatic voter registration in 2016, but still has issues with non-citizens registering to vote.

“Still?” As in, Oregon has made an effort to fix the problem?