Oregon elections director fired after raising issues
SALEM, Ore. – Oregon’s elections director was abruptly fired in a text message by the secretary of state after he pointed out serious issues with the state’s aging and vulnerable technology for running elections.
Elections Director Stephen Trout learned in a text message Thursday night – as his department and county elections officials were still counting votes from the Nov. 3 election – that he was out.
On Friday, Secretary of State Bev Clarno, a Republican appointed to the position by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, announced to county clerks and other elections officials in Oregon’s 36 counties that “today is also Steve Trout’s last day with the Agency.”
Election officials in the state were stunned.
Steve Druckenmiller, the veteran Linn County clerk, said Clarno’s action was “dangerous and so ignorant.”
“We are still in the election process right now. We are reconciling, we’re dealing with problems right now as far as your signatures and communicating with voters who didn’t sign the ballots,” Druckenmiller said. “We’re going to have to do recounts, all of these things. She doesn’t understand elections.”
Clarno’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trout said in an email to The Associated Press that although he had already planned to seek a new job, he did not want to go this soon.
“I would never leave in the middle of an election,” Trout said. “This is the toughest part of the election behind the scenes with the canvass, manual audit, electoral college, and recounts. I would not abandon my staff or the counties before the election is over.”
Trout, in a Nov. 2 letter to the Republican and Democratic candidates to replace Clarno, described problems with the internet technology side of the secretary of state’s office.
He also said federal money had been misspent and that $5.7 million in federal CARES Act allocations must be returned by Dec. 31 because the Legislature did not authorize it to be spent. Danny Moran, spokesman for Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, said those funds were restricted to addressing additional costs to election offices caused by the coronavirus, and required a 20% state match.
The Oregon Centralized Voter Registration system is so old that Microsoft no longer supports the Windows Server 2008 system that it operates on, Trout and county election officials said. There is also no multifactor identification to protect it from hacks.
To Druckenmiller, the most critical security issue is “the vulnerability of running on software that is no longer even supported.”
“I wouldn’t do that even on my home laptop,” he said.
The secretary of state’s office was going to take bids – known as a request for proposal, or RFP – in October for a new voter registration system, but Clarno paused it without consulting with the county clerks or Trout, the ousted election director said.
Trout said the delay was apparently caused because the purchasing team could not meet a timeline even though the team had been provided with funds for one full-time employee to work exclusively on the request for proposal.