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Other Views: Oregon's voting system is secure Saturday Mar 4, 2017 at 12:01 AM The (Albany) Democrat-Herald Here's a message from Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson to President Donald Trump: If you're looking for evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 general election, you're wasting your time looking in Oregon. "I'm pleased to report that in Oregon we have reviewed the processes and we are confident that voter fraud in last November's election did not occur in Oregon," Richardson wrote in a letter to Trump. "In short, elections in Oregon cannot be hacked." President Trump repeatedly has said he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election were it not for 3 million to 5 million immigrants in the country illegally who voted for Hillary Clinton. (Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.) He has not offered any evidence that voter fraud occurred on anywhere near that scale, but he apparently is not willing to concede the point — and, apparently is unwilling to settle for the consolation prize of actually winning the presidency. Trump has called for a thorough investigation. Richardson, the first Republican elected to a statewide office in Oregon in a couple of decades, doesn't stand to lose much political credibility here by pushing back a bit against the president. In fact, it might bolster his standing among the state's Democratic voters, who hold a comfortable numerical advantage. But Richardson's stance still was welcome to see — and a related point he made is worth exploring. In his letter, he asked Trump to roll back an Obama administration initiative to declare elections systems as "critical infrastructure." The designation was made shortly before last year's presidential contest in response to allegations of Russian meddling in the election. Richardson and other secretary of states pushed back against the designation, worried that it might open the door for allowing the federal government more authority over elections systems. In his letter to Trump, Richardson wrote "federal intrusion into Oregon's election process should be rejected." Richardson said he had no problem with sharing information about potential threats to our elections with the federal government. But he told Trump that states should retain "full authority over elections." That seems sound. In fact, one of the hurdles hackers face when attempting to wreak havoc with our elections is the decentralized nature of our elections. And there seems little need to create a centralized election system under the aegis of the federal government. A decentralized approach also allows states to try their own experiments with elections. Oregon, for example, could have been prevented from its successful vote-by-mail system if it had been required to jump through a variety of federal hoops. Now, other states interested in following Oregon's lead can do so — and, in fact, they should. As far as voter fraud in Oregon goes, Richardson did tell The Oregonian newspaper this week that his election office is looking into two addresses that received a suspicious number of ballots. More than 6,500 addresses across Oregon receive more than 10 ballots, but they tend to be locations such as retirement homes and fraternities or sororities. Richardson told the newspaper that two addresses, which he declined to identify, seem suspicious and that investigation into the two is continuing. He cautioned that no actual voter fraud has yet been found. We have worried that Trump's continued insistence about widespread voter fraud is an attempt to pave the way for tighter voter ID laws or other measures that could make it more difficult for certain segments of the population to cast ballots. But Oregon continues to roll in the opposite direction — this state has aggressively removed barriers to voting. It's encouraging to see Richardson rolling in that direction as well.