Profoundd checked a post on X by Ben Edtl (@benedtl), a Tualatin man whose profile calls him “Oregon’s MAGA warrior,” against the Census Bureau’s data files, the Oregon Secretary of State’s registration reports, the federal Election Assistance Commission’s survey, a state audit and court records. He posted it late Wednesday, Nov. 4, and it had about 54,600 views by Thursday morning. The verdicts come first; the story follows.
The claims, checked
- "Oregon had a net population gain of 36,530 since 2020 - 100% of which are international immigrants." Confirmed, with a small arithmetic difference. The post’s parts are the Oregon Employment Department’s rounded figures from the Census Bureau’s 2025 estimates: since 2020 “net international immigration added 56,700,” domestic migration “resulted in a drop of 670” and natural change “reduced the population by 19,500” (QualityInfo, Feb. 9, 2026). The Census file puts the exact gain from April 1, 2020, to July 1, 2025, at 36,304 people (0.86%); the post added the rounded parts and left out a 299-person adjustment the Bureau calls the residual. Without net international migration of 56,736, the same file shows Oregon losing 20,432 people. The Bureau’s international figure is a net count that also includes Americans moving abroad and back, and it is not published by citizenship (Census glossary).
- "263,459 new active voter registrations in the same time period." The number checks out; the two periods differ by 16 months, though the post’s reading of “since 2020” is a natural one. July 2025 is the newest population estimate the Census Bureau has published, and election night is the newest registration count, so each number runs from 2020 to its latest figure. The 263,459 is the gap between 2,845,634 voters at the May 19, 2020, primary, in the Secretary of State’s cost-and-participation table, and 3,109,093 active voters on the state results site at 10 p.m. on election night, Nov. 3, 2026. That runs 16 months past the population figures, which stop in July 2025. Over the population window, the state’s monthly counts show active registrations up 188,909, or 6.6% (2,854,691 on April 2, 2020, a pre-primary high, to 3,043,600 on July 7, 2025). July to July, which avoids that peak, the rise is 207,905, or 7.3% (from 2,835,695). From the November 2020 general election to this one, it is 157,665, or 5.3% (2,951,428 to 3,109,093).
- "how exactly can voter registrations grow 700% larger than population growth of made up of 100% non-citizens?" Overstated in size; the direction holds. Only citizens 18 and over can vote, so the fair yardstick is adult citizens, not everyone. The Census Bureau counts 103,625 more adult citizens in its 2020-2024 survey average than in its 2016-2020 one, a rise of 3.3% (3,108,030 to 3,211,655). Over the matching span, July 2018 to July 2022, active registrations rose 276,623, or 10.3% (2,681,654 to 2,958,277): about 2.7 to 1. Against all civilian adults from July 2020 to July 2025, registrations rose 207,905 (7.3%) and adults 88,411 (2.6%): about 2.4 to 1. So the post is right that registrations grew faster than the people eligible to vote, by about two and a half times, not seven.
- "None of this is believable. None of this is legit." Overstated as worded, but the suspicion has a statistical basis. For the post: Oregon’s active rolls equal 95.3% of its adult citizens, the fourth-highest share among the states and D.C., and the Justice Department called that rate “unusually high” and Oregon’s removals “well below the national average.” Relative to the number of people who left the state, Oregon removed fewer registrations for moving than any other state with complete federal data. By the Census Bureau’s survey benchmark, the active list is about 395,000 names, roughly one in eight, longer than the number of adult citizens who say they are registered. The DMV also registered 1,952 people who had not proven eligibility, 44 of whom voted. Against it: that one-in-eight gap is close to the median state’s, not an outlier; Oregon’s removals for death equal a larger share of its deaths than in 30 of 40 states; the extra registration growth does not follow immigration county by county; and the documented ineligible registrations equal about 0.07% of the active rolls. Traced through the federal survey, the additions since 2020 are about as many as the eligible people who moved in or turned 18; the removals fall far short of the people who moved out or died. No match of the full active list against move, death and citizenship records has been published, as far as Profoundd’s Nov. 5 searches found.
Where the population numbers come from
The chart in the post matches the Oregon Employment Department’s Feb. 9 analysis of the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimates. The department’s economist, Luke Coury, wrote that most of the state’s 2024-25 growth came from international immigration, adding: “This dynamic was even more pronounced over the longer period between 2020 and 2025.” Profoundd summed the Bureau’s yearly components for Oregon: 206,366 births against 225,829 deaths, net international migration of 56,736 (37,413 of it in the two years to July 2024), and net domestic migration of -670. The total, 36,304, is 0.86% growth in five years and three months. Over the same period the population under 18 fell by 59,726 and the civilian population 18 and over grew by 96,175.
Oregon’s own official estimates, made by Portland State University, run somewhat higher. For the latest year, July 2024 to July 2025, Portland State counted growth of 0.3%, or 14,021 people, the Employment Department reported, where the Census Bureau counted 0.2%, or 8,262. Either way the post’s point about population holds: growth since 2020 has been small, and it came from abroad.
Where the registration numbers come from
The 263,459 subtracts the same kind of count taken on two different kinds of day: the active-voter total at a May primary and the active-voter total on general election night. Oregon’s active rolls rise before big elections and fall after the counties clean up. The state’s monthly count rose 95,325 between May 4 and Nov. 3, 2020 (data.oregon.gov), and fell 49,295 between Nov. 6 and Dec. 9, 2024 (data.oregon.gov). The state’s November 2026 report, prepared Nov. 3, shows 3,112,307 active voters, 3,214 more than the results site’s figure, which was captured at a different moment.
What is left: a registered share that keeps climbing
Comparing like with like shrinks the gap but does not close it. Measured against the Census survey’s adult citizens, active registrations rose from 86.3% in July 2018 to 92.1% in July 2022. Against all adults in the same surveys the share rose by the same 5.8 points (81.0% to 86.8%), so counting only citizens raises the level, not the trend. Measured against the Bureau’s yearly estimates of civilian adults, most of the recent rise came between July 2020 and July 2022 (84.1% to 87.0%), then slowed (88.0% in July 2025). On election night 2026, the state’s 3,112,307 active voters equaled 95.6% of the Bureau’s newest single-year count of adult citizens, 3,256,893 in 2024, plus or minus 8,836 (ACS 2024, via Census Reporter).
The Justice Department has made the same point. In a July 16, 2025, letter to Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat, it wrote that Oregon has “nearly as many registered voters listed as active as the citizen voting age population,” 95.3% in 2024, and that the ratio “has been unusually high for several years” (93.3% in 2022 and 93.1% in 2020). It added that “Oregon removed 111,621 voters, or 3.6% of registered voters, which is well below the national average of 9.1%,” and that Oregon, which removed 4,417 people for not answering an address check and missing two federal elections, “by far, has reported the lowest numbers of removals for this category of all NVRA covered states reporting data.” Read declined to give the narrative explanations the department asked for: “I am not aware of anything in the NVRA or HAVA that would require this,” he wrote on Aug. 21, 2025, adding that his administration was working “to standardize and improve statewide data collection and reporting.”
At a court hearing in January, department lawyer James Thomas Tucker said: “When the state goes above the 95% threshold, that’s a red flag.” U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai said the 1960 civil-rights law the department relied on was about voters being kept off the rolls: “exclusion was the primary consideration, not over-inclusion,” the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported.
Oregon is high but not alone. Using the same measure for every state, the active voters each reported to the Election Assistance Commission for Nov. 5, 2024, divided by the Census Bureau’s 2020-2024 count of adult citizens, Oregon ranks fourth: Alaska 104.9% (565,242 of 538,813), Delaware 97.2% (742,370 of 764,113), Maryland 95.8% (4,231,112 of 4,418,305), Oregon 95.3% (3,060,374 of 3,211,655) and Michigan 95.0% (7,267,666 of 7,653,711). The national figure on that measure is about 87%, by Profoundd’s arithmetic from the EAC survey files.
Three state policies push the share up. Motor Voter, in force since January 2016, registers eligible people automatically from DMV records; it added 272,702 voters in its first 11 months, the Secretary of State reported at the time. Oregon lets citizens register from age 16, though they cannot vote until 18 (Secretary of State). And House Bill 2681 (Oregon Laws 2021, chapter 233, effective Sept. 25, 2021) says a registration “may not be considered inactive due to an elector not voting or updating the elector’s registration for any period of time.” Before it, according to the Secretary of State’s description in the legislative staff summary, a voter with no voting or registration activity for 10 years could be moved to inactive status; the law reactivated anyone inactive for that reason alone. It passed the House 52-2 and the Senate 19-3, according to a House Democratic caucus release and Vote Smart, and a referendum petition against it lapsed when the petition’s sponsors did not turn in signatures. Since then, people who stop voting stay on the active list unless mail to them comes back undeliverable.
The federal survey shows the flow in and out. From November 2020 to November 2024, Oregon recorded 516,456 new valid registrations and 102,854 pre-registrations, and removed 228,928 registrations: 142,931 for death, 20,771 for moving away, 11,287 for not answering an address check and missing two federal elections, and 53,021 at the voter’s request (EAVS 2022 and 2024 data files). Removals for death, about 35,700 a year, compare with Oregon’s roughly 43,500 deaths a year (Census), not all of whom were registered. Removals for moving, about 5,200 a year, are far fewer than the roughly 113,000 people who left Oregon for other states in 2024 (Census figures via USAFacts). People who move are usually first made inactive when a ballot comes back undelivered, not removed, and Oregon reported no inactive count to the survey, one of the things the Justice Department asked it to explain. That gap is where the post’s worry has the most room.
Putting numbers on the smoke
A registered share near 95% and low removal counts are smoke. Profoundd ran five tests on public data to see where a fire would be and how big it could be. Each test uses the same measure for every state, so Oregon is compared with its peers, not with an ideal. States missing data for a test are left out of that test.
- People who moved away: the strongest signal, and it points at Oregon. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey counts 157,729 people who moved from Oregon to another state in 2022, 131,403 in 2023 and 112,636 in 2024 (state-to-state migration tables), about 536,000 over four years at that pace. From November 2020 to November 2024, Oregon removed 32,058 registrations for moving or for failing an address check, equal to 6% of that number. Among the 32 states with complete federal data, the median state removed the equivalent of 64% of its out-movers, and the next-lowest, New Mexico, 32%. Counting removals at the voter’s request as well, Oregon is still lowest, at 16% against a median of 70% (27 states). Some states’ counts include moves between their own counties, so the comparison is rough, but Oregon’s figure is less than a fifth of the next-lowest state’s. Most people who leave Oregon are made inactive when a ballot comes back, not removed, which is how about 800,000 inactive records piled up by January. The data cannot show how many movers’ ballots are never sent back, which would leave them on the active list.
- How many names may be out of date: about one in eight, typical of the states. In the Census Bureau’s November 2024 survey, 83.0% of Oregon’s adult citizens said they were registered, plus or minus 3.0 points (Table 4a). Applied to the Bureau’s count of 3,211,655 adult citizens, that is about 2,666,000 people, while the state reported 3,060,374 active registrations that month. The difference, about 395,000 names, or 12.9% of the active list (298,000 to 491,000 within the survey’s margin), is roughly how many active registrations no registered resident accounts for: people who moved, died or are listed twice, plus survey error. The survey is not exact: some people say they are registered when they are not, and the Bureau counts people who did not answer as not registered. Measured the same way, the median state’s gap is 13.7% and the gap for all reporting states together 15.7%, and 25 of 46 states have a bigger gap than Oregon. So Oregon’s list very likely carries hundreds of thousands of stale names, and so do most states’ lists.
- Dead voters: Oregon does better than most states. Oregon removed 142,931 registrations for death from November 2020 to November 2024, and the Census Bureau counts 174,188 deaths in Oregon from July 2020 to June 2024. Removals equal 82% of deaths, a higher share than in 30 of the 40 states with complete data, where the median is 74%. The share cannot reach 100%, because not everyone who dies was registered.
- Immigration: the extra registrations do not follow it. If the growth came from noncitizens, the counties with the most immigration should show the most registration growth beyond their adult population. For each of Oregon’s 36 counties, Profoundd compared active registrations in July 2020 and July 2025 (data.oregon.gov) with the Census Bureau’s county estimates of adults and of net international migration. Registrations outgrew adults in 33 of the 36 counties, by 4.7 points statewide (7.3% against 2.6%). But the gap does not rise with immigration; the correlation is slightly negative (-0.18). Washington County, with the most international migration (3.1 people per 100 residents since 2020), had a gap of 3.1 points, and Benton County, second (2.8 per 100), had none (-1.5). The biggest gaps were in Malheur (10.3 points), Wallowa (9.1), Baker (8.8), Umatilla (8.4) and Curry (7.8) counties, where international migration ranged from none to 1.4 per 100. A county comparison cannot rule out individual cases such as the DMV errors below. But a gap that shows up in nearly every county at a similar size points to statewide rules and list upkeep, not to immigrants.
- Growth compared with other states: above average, not extreme. From November 2020 to November 2024, general election to general election, Oregon’s active registrations grew 3.9% (2,944,588 to 3,060,374), and its adult citizens grew 3.3% in the Census survey averages. That 0.6-point gap ranks 12th of 44 states with complete data. In the median state, registrations grew 1.5 points slower than adult citizens, and 11 states, led by West Virginia, South Dakota and Nevada, had bigger gaps than Oregon. How fast the rolls outgrew the population depends heavily on the dates chosen. July 2020 was a low point before that year’s election surge, and of the 207,905 active registrations added from July 2020 to July 2025, 91,217 came in the first year.
Sources for the tests: the Election Assistance Commission’s 2020, 2022 and 2024 survey files; the Census Bureau’s citizen voting-age population tabulations for 2016-2020 and 2020-2024; its Vintage 2025 state and county population estimates; its 2022-2024 state-to-state migration tables; its November 2024 voting supplement; and the state’s monthly registration counts. The arithmetic is Profoundd’s.
Where the 263,459 came from
The post’s own endpoints split into three pieces. From the May 19, 2020, primary (2,845,634) to the Nov. 3, 2020, election (2,958,156), the active count rose 112,522, the climb before a presidential election; the same spring-to-November climb was 40,733 in 2022 and 44,863 in 2024 (data.oregon.gov). From that election to Nov. 6, 2024 (3,084,789), it rose 126,633. And from then to election night this week (3,109,093), it rose 24,304.
For the four years between the presidential elections, the federal survey shows what went on and off. Oregon added 516,456 new registrations and 102,854 pre-registrations of 16- and 17-year-olds, about 619,000 in all, more than two-thirds of them through the DMV. That is about as many as the eligible people who arrived or came of age: about 407,000 adult citizens moved in from other states, by the Census Bureau’s migration tables and its count of movers’ ages and citizenship, and about 202,000 Oregonians turned 18, most of them citizens. That leaves out new citizens and Americans returning from abroad. So the number of additions does not, by itself, show improper registrations; it cannot show whether each one was proper, which is what the DMV errors below are about.
The other side of the ledger is where the count runs ahead of the population. Over the same years, about 440,000 adults moved to other states, if they match the age and citizenship of people moving in, and 174,188 Oregonians died, about 614,000 departures. The state removed 228,928 registrations. Every other departure was either moved to the inactive list, which the post’s numbers leave out, or is still on the active list; the state does not publish how many of each. The growth beyond the population comes from those departures not being taken off, or from longtime residents registering for the first time through the DMV, and the published data cannot split the two.
What the records show about the rolls
Noncitizens registered by the DMV. “Prompted by an inquiry from an outside entity,” the DMV reviewed its records in 2024, the Secretary of State says. In September 2024 the state disclosed that the DMV had registered 1,259 people without proof of citizenship, nine of whom had voted, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported; the count reached 1,561 in October (AP). The Secretary of State’s page on the errors, updated Oct. 7, 2026, now counts “1,952 individuals being registered to vote who did not provide proof of their eligibility,” of whom “only 44” voted. It says “many have confirmed their citizenship,” that none of the 44 votes could have affected an outcome, and that the office “will not refer anyone for criminal prosecution because the DMV mistakenly registered them.” The DMV is still finding old errors: its quarterly reports list 77 more in the first nine months of 2026, five with a voting history (Q1, Q2, Q3).
The audit. An outside firm, Baker Tilly, audited Motor Voter for the state’s Department of Administrative Services and delivered its report on July 1, 2025 (PDF). It rated one finding “High” risk: “Reliance on legacy citizenship records introduces a risk that inaccurate or unsupported ‘C-Citizen’ designations may persist in the system. This could result in ineligible individuals being automatically registered to vote and only discovered if/when future transactions reveal non-citizen status.” In a sample of 35 driver-license and ID transactions, one carried a citizen designation with no supporting record. The auditors wrote that the number of potentially ineligible people registered “is likely too small to affect the outcome of an election,” and noted that state law (ORS 807.040) does not let the DMV require proof of citizenship again once it is on file.
The Federalist’s figures. The Federalist applied the audit’s one-in-35 rate to 766,756 Motor Voter registrations and estimated that the system “may have registered more than 21,470 voters without proof of citizenship.” The audit says “Both random and judgmental sampling methods were used” and sampled license and ID transactions, not voter registrations, so its one case cannot be projected onto every Motor Voter registration, and the flagged record lacked paperwork, which is not a finding that the person is not a citizen. In November 2024, citing DMV documents, The Federalist reported that the DMV “sent 54,656 such registrations to the secretary of state from June 2021 to October 2024” for people of “unknown citizenship status,” whose documents neither proved nor disproved citizenship. An Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman, Kevin Glenn, told the outlet the process “requires the person certify they are a U.S. citizen.” Neither report says how many of those people are not citizens.
The inactive backlog, which is not in the post’s numbers. About 800,000 Oregon registrations were inactive in January 2026 because election mail to them came back undelivered, and officials had no consistent process for cancelling them after July 2017, Willamette Week reported. Read ordered about 160,000 of the oldest cancelled. Judicial Watch, which sued in October 2024, says Oregon and 35 of its counties had registration rates above 100% and “the highest known inactive registration rate of any state”; those rates count inactive records. A federal court denied the state’s motion to dismiss in August 2025, according to Judicial Watch, and the state settled in 2026, agreeing to report its list-maintenance data for five years. Read has not said Oregon broke federal law, OPB reported. Inactive voters receive no ballots, the state says, and Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center, a free-market think tank, matched 138,223 removed inactive registrations against the 2024 voter file and found that none had voted in 2024. The post’s 3.1 million counts active voters only.
Counties where the active list is larger than the Census count. Profoundd compared each county’s active registrations in the state’s November 2026 report with the Census Bureau’s 2020-2024 count of adult citizens, an average centered on 2022. Ten of 36 counties came out above 100%. Three of them, Morrow, Tillamook and Clackamas, are within the survey’s margin of error. Crook (21,874 active voters against 21,028 adult citizens, 104.0%) and Deschutes (169,458 against 161,933, 104.6%) grew 4.4% and 3.2% from 2022 to 2025, by the Bureau’s county estimates, enough to cover most of the gap. Growth does not explain Wallowa County, at 106.6% (6,383 against 5,990), or Hood River, at 102.5% (17,027 against 16,606): both lost population over those years. Linn (101,363 against 98,772), Josephine (70,392 against 69,723) and Columbia (42,256 against 41,879) are also above. The Census survey counts people where they are living when interviewed, not where they are registered, so part-year residents can account for some of a gap; an active list larger than a county’s adult citizens is also what stale registrations would produce.
Who checks the list. Oregon belongs to ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center, a group of 27 states and D.C. whose board is made up of election officials, among them Oregon’s elections director, Dena Dawson (ERIC). ERIC matches members’ rolls against Social Security death records, Postal Service change-of-address data and other members’ DMV records, and sends the matches to the states. It does not check citizenship, it flags moves only between member states, and Oregon has not published what it has flagged, as far as Profoundd found. The DMV samples 500 of its own records a month and reports “zero errors in new transactions” for two years; that is the agency checking itself, on new records. As of February, Oregon did not check its rolls against the federal SAVE citizenship database; the Secretary of State’s office maintains that relying on SAVE for list maintenance is dangerous because it has repeatedly flagged U.S. citizens as possible noncitizens, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported.
The Justice Department sued in September 2025 for the unredacted list, including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Judge Kasubhai dismissed the suit in January 2026, ruling that federal law does not require Oregon to hand over the unredacted data; that ruling was about the department’s legal right to the list, not about whether the list is accurate. The department appealed, and the Ninth Circuit heard arguments on May 19 (Oregon Department of Justice); Profoundd’s searches on Nov. 5 found no ruling yet. Anyone can buy the public part of the list: “Oregon allows for public access to certain voter-registration data, including a voter’s residence address and birth year, for a fee,” Read wrote to the department. Under Oregon’s settlement with Judicial Watch, the group can now get the list on request.
What the records leave open
These questions go to the Secretary of State’s office, which keeps the rolls, and the DMV, which feeds Motor Voter. How many active registrants have moved out of state or died without their mail coming back? Why did Oregon remove 32,058 registrations for moving or failed address checks from 2020 to 2024, when about 536,000 people left for other states, the lowest ratio of any state with complete data? How many ballots mailed in 2024 were never returned and never came back undelivered? How many ERIC matches has Oregon received since 2020, and how many did it act on? How many people did HB 2681 put back on the active list in 2021? What did the DMV’s plan for its old citizenship records, which it agreed in the audit to deliver by December 2025, find? Why did Oregon report no inactive count to the federal survey? And what outside check of the active list would the office accept, if not SAVE? For Mr. Edtl: why compare a May 2020 primary with a November 2026 election night, and what records would show the extra registrations belong to people who are not eligible? Profoundd has not yet put these questions to the office or to Mr. Edtl.
What Profoundd could not check
Profoundd could not download Oregon’s naturalization counts from the Homeland Security Department’s site and did not see the DMV documents behind The Federalist’s 54,656 figure. Residents’ reports of dead voters on the rolls in Polk and Douglas counties surfaced in searches but could not be confirmed from county records, so they are not used here. The vote counts for HB 2681 come from secondary sources; the Legislature’s own pages show passage dates but not tallies.
Profoundd's read
The post’s numbers are real. The population figures are the Census Bureau’s and the Employment Department’s, and the 263,459 is the state’s own count, subtracted. The comparison is where it overreaches: total population nets out a shrinking population of children, so it understates how many people became old enough to vote, and the registration window runs 16 months longer, to an election-night peak. Measured against adult citizens, registrations grew about two and a half times as fast, not seven.
That still leaves a real problem, and the post is right to raise it. The statistics locate it. Oregon removes almost no one for moving: relative to the people leaving the state, it removes fewer than any other state with complete data. By the Census survey benchmark, its active list carries roughly 300,000 to 490,000 more names than there are registered residents to account for. That share is close to the median state’s, so stale names are a common condition of American voter lists rather than something unique to Oregon; it is still a problem. Part of Oregon’s high share is also policy that registers people automatically and keeps non-voters active. The evidence does not tie the growth to the immigrants the post highlights: the extra growth does not track immigration county by county, and dead voters are removed more completely than in most states. If “None of this is legit” means the list overstates how many real, current voters Oregon has, the statistics back the post: the state adds newcomers about as fast as they arrive and takes leavers off far more slowly than they go. If it means ineligible people registering or voting, the records show 1,952 plus 77 such registrations, not hundreds of thousands. Either way, the list has had no published outside audit for moves, deaths and citizenship, and the Secretary of State has not answered the questions above.
