Representative Dwayne Yunker – Should the DOJ investigate Oregon's elections?

Oregon officials say noncitizen voting cases caused "no harm done," but critics argue the response raises serious questions about election integrity.

Oregon State Representative Dwayne Yunker joins the show to discuss his request for a federal investigation, why he believes Oregon is failing to enforce election laws, and what reforms he says are needed.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you on a First Amendment Friday, live on the Radio Northwest Network, and always glad to take your calls. If you want to join the best conversation in talk journalism, it's here every day at 866. Hey Lars. That's 866-439-5277. Send your emails to talk at LarsLarson.com. Well, it is a fact that non-citizens have voted in Oregon elections. And we know that at least thousands of non citizens were registered to vote. Although the current Secretary of State, Tobias Reed, the only Democrat in Salem who is brave enough to come on this show, and he does come on from time to time, but he simply says it's not really a problem, even though Tobias Reed saw fit to not check the rest of the voter rolls to find any other non-citizens that are currently on the system. But Representative Duane Yunker does want something done about it. He represents House District 3 in the Grants Pass area. Representative Yunker, welcome back to the program.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Thank you. Thank you, Lars, for having me back.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

I'm guessing you saw last night's speech by Donald Trump in which he talks about four states where they simply sampled the registered voters and found a quarter of a million non-citizens. Is this a problem that Oregon should get on top of?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

I think every state should I I I believe that election carrying isn't about making it hard to vote. It's about making it harder to cheat. It's about making it easier for illegal voters to trust the outcome. I think it's about trust. I think that's where Tobias Ree is missing this mark. Um I have many of them orgoing that comes all the time and say, They're discouraged about voting. Well, why should I vote? They're just the other side's cheating. Well, we need to build confidence for those people to engage in voting. Um we know there's been cheating. You just admit it, you just said it a few seconds ago that there's been documentation of cheating or people registered that shouldn't be on there. Um, I could say my neighbor, um, I'm a realtor also, and I sold him his home five years ago. He moved to Idaho. Now, as a as a as a representative, I have the records of the registered Republicans in my district.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Um, and I was going through the rolls in in this this spring, and his name's still on the roll. He moved five years ago. He's registered in Idaho. I'm assuming he's a Republican. Why is he still registered as one of my constituents? He shouldn't be on the roll. Um, we know of college kids that are um registered in two states. Uh, I mean, this is these are e I think these are just simple questions which asked, hey, how what are you doing to fix these issues? Instead, Tobias Reed is just, we're doing it, you know, we're not gonna, we're not gonna give you any information, we're not gonna do nothing. Well, that doesn't help the confidence of orgonians.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Well, and and not only that, but last night in the PISA video he put on social media, he said, we check the people who register to vote uh to see if they have citizenship or not. They don't. They take the voter's word for it. If the voter walks in and says, I want a driver's license, and they give the person a driver's license, and then they say, Would you like to be registered to vote? And the person says, Yes, go ahead, register me to vote. Then they're registered to vote, and the state simply takes their word for it. It's all on the honor system. Now, you're in real estate. How much of real estate is on the honor system and how much of it is stacks and stacks of paper and notaries and signatures and sixteen kind of uh the last time Tina and I uh bought a house, we had to provide two forms of ID a picture ID driver's license and a passport to be able to close that deal. So that's just to buy a house. And yet Tobias Reed is happy to say, uh, if you say you're eligible to vote, we'll register you to vote. And he even allows the people at DMV, which I think is one of the big flaws, is Secretary of State is supposed to be an election specialist. That's the person in charge. Uh county elections officials are election specialists. DMV is not, which means they can register people to vote and say, you've got me registering people to vote, and I have no expertise whatsoever in who's allowed to vote and who's not, so they just sign up anybody they want.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah, I I would agree. There's definitely flaws. I I another thing issue we had, you know, I helped out with the local elections here in May. Um, I'm a Republican, I work in the Republican office, and I was helping people answer questions, and we had so many people come in with a ballot that were non-affiliate, and they go, I've been a lifelong Republican. Why can't I vote for you or any of these state-run um elections for Republicans? And they've been changed to non-affiliated. Uh, you know, we help them get fixed. But that how many percentage of those people have been taken out of the rolls to go vote for Republicans or Democrats, wherever they're supposed to be, that's an error. That what percentage of that's been messed up? There is problems. That is his job to make sure every organ voter gets to vote the proper way for the proper people that they they want to vote for. And I think he's he's he's he's not doing his job. He's just more of Democratic talking points instead of making every person in Oregon feel that they're secured. And I have a problem even further because as the Democratic Party moves closer to this socialism kind of thing, they believe open borders, they believe everything. What's gonna happen? What those kinds of people that are coming in, and we have several more DSA people coming into the legislature. That's not we're not supposed to have illegals voting. You have to be a U.S. citizen voting. That is the law.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

And and I guess, Duane, uh, you know, here's part of the problem I've got. Uh long, long time ago, I got audited by the IRS three different times. Twice I owed them, I don't know, $60 or $70. The last time I owed them $37. And they said, don't even bother writing the check. We don't deal with amounts that small. So, you know, and but I wasn't unhappy to have them check my paperwork. I said, Go ahead, check the paperwork. If you find an error, I'll be happy to correct it. I don't know why that isn't the attitude of Kate uh Tina Kotec and Tobias Reed and everybody else. If Tobias Reed says, You're right, we've got solid voter rolls, we don't register foreigners, even though several thousand foreigners were registered a couple of years ago. Go ahead, check our paperwork, and if you find any errors, tell us where they are and we'll fix them. But that's not his attitude. His attitude is, don't you dare even look. And he's fun he's fundraising for his campaign for re-election on emails in which he says, I will fight Donald Trump's attempt to come in and look at our voter rolls. Well, when Judicial Watch came in and sued the state of Oregon, the state of Oregon under Devis Reed finally settled by saying, Okay, we'll take 160,000 voters off the rolls that never should have been on the rolls, and we'll check several hundred thousand others. When you've got that kind of indication of problems, you would think you'd invite people to come in. Come in, double check our work, and we'll show you that we're solid. That's not his attitude at all.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

No, no. And you know, businesses have the same thing. They do audits all the time. They have independent people that are not attached to the business, come in and audit their books, find our problems. What is wrong with government having audits? That makes your that makes the people trust you more, not less trust. And I agree exactly what you just said. We should be encouraging audits. We should be encouraging that that this is not happening. And Oregon is a place where we do not let um fraud or elections integrity um it should be secure. That's how you have confidence of the people. And Tobias Reading, it's all political. Tina Kotex message yesterday, it's all political. I in honestly, I could care what Trump says or whatever says, I want the right thing to happen.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Exactly right. That is Representative Dwayne Yunker. He represents House District Three in the Grants Pass area. Representative Yunker, thanks for the time. Back in just a moment, we'll talk about one of the justices on the Supreme Court and her big conflict of interest.