Were 20 percent of Oregon voters revealed to be "fake" after the secretary of state announced they were going to clean 800,000 names from voter rolls? No, that's not true: The removal of 800,000 inactive registered voters is part of routine voter roll maintenance required by state law. The 800,000 are not part of the 3 million active registered voters in Oregon who actually vote and receive ballots. The secretary of state said they were removed to clean up old registrations no longer in use. Inactive voter registrations are removed when they have not voted or responded to official mail for multiple election cycles.
The claim appeared in a January 12, 2026, post on X.com account @upstatefederlst (archived here) which opened:
Hold on. Oregon's population is only 4.25M.... 20% of their registered voters were fake?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/upstatefederlst/status/2010592304818712900.)
The tweet was a response to one posted by @TomFitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative organization, that said, "HUGE: After @JudicialWatch lawsuit, Oregon Secretary of State announces he will now clean 800,000 names from voter rolls."
HUGE: After @JudicialWatch lawsuit, Oregon Secretary of State announces he will now clean 800,000 names from voter rolls. https://t.co/82MFF9xfUh
-- Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 12, 2026
Lead Stories reached out to Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read. Tess Seger, deputy chief of staff for communications, responded by email on Jan. 14, 2026, saying the claim was "incredibly misleading." Via telephone, Seger said the 800,000 people being removed from the voter rolls "are people who were at one time registered to vote in Oregon." She shared a Jan. 9, 2026, press release (archived here) from the secretary of state's office explaining the removal of about 800,000 inactive registrations from the voter rolls.
The release said Oregon has more than 3 million active voters and explained that inactive voters "do not receive ballots" and therefore have not voted recently. It said inactive voters are people who previously registered to vote but later became inactive:
A record is moved to "inactive" status when elections officials identify that a registration is potentially out-of-date, for example: their election mail is returned as undeliverable. Oregonians will receive notification if their record is inactivated, and they must take action to re-activate their record and receive a ballot.
Inactive voters do not receive ballots.
There are approximately 800,000 inactive voter records still being maintained by elections officials. This data is separate from Oregon's active voter list and not included in the 3 million active voter total. Neither of these directives will impact Oregon's 3 million active voters.
The press release stated, "None of the individuals associated with these records voted between the time their record was scheduled for cancelation and today; and the presence of these records on Oregon's voter rolls has not impacted any election." It continued:
Under the first directive, county elections officials will cancel inactive voter registrations that already met federal and state standards for removal before July 20, 2017. Because their registrations were inactive, no ballots were sent to these individuals between 2017 and today.
- These records meet the following conditions:
- Mail from local elections officials to these individuals was returned as undeliverable.
- These individuals were sent voter confirmation cards - a notice, by forwardable mail, warning them their voter registrations were subject to cancelation if they did not vote or update their registration information between receiving that notice and the next two federal general elections.
- There was no response to the voter confirmation card.
Lead Stories asked Seger about Fitton's tweet implying the secretary of state will be cleaning the 800,000 names from the voter rolls because of the Judicial Watch lawsuit. She responded:
We can't comment on pending litigation. I can say that getting this done was a priority for Secretary Read before he even took office, and he took this step because it's the right thing to do. He wants his office focused on the details. We know this won't satisfy those bad actors trying to undermine our free, fair, secure American elections, but the average Oregon voter can rest assured we are doing the hard work of running accurate and transparent elections.
Christopher Stout, a political science professor at Oregon State University, explained to Lead Stories why voters are removed from the rolls in an email on Jan. 15, 2026:
It is unlikely that people were removed for being fake. Secretaries of state clean up their voter rolls for many reasons. Sometimes people die and are still on the rolls -- they do not vote, but they remain registered -- or they move and are still registered. While people cannot vote in two states, it is possible to be registered in more than one. To address this, secretaries of state and election officials periodically remove inactive voters. These are voters who have not participated in elections for some time.
