by Julia Shumway, Oregon Capital Chronicle April 4, 2025
Oregon, the first state in the nation to adopt mail voting and automatic voter registration, is suing President Donald Trump over a sweeping executive order meant to reshape elections across the country.
The lawsuit, filed by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and Washington Attorney General Nick Brown in federal district court in Washington on Friday, is one of three federal lawsuits Rayfield joined on Friday and one of 12 he has filed or joined since he took office on Dec. 31. His predecessor during Trump’s first term, former Democratic Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, had only filed one lawsuit by this point in Trump’s first term, Rayfield noted.
“The common theme that you have heard for the first 100 days that I’ve been in office, and that you’ll hear today, is that the president has a lot of powers in the world, but the president does not have the power to ignore the United States Constitution, nor does the president have the ability to ignore federal law,” Rayfield told reporters during a virtual press conference Friday morning.
He joined two other multistate lawsuits filed by Democratic attorneys general in federal courts in Massachusetts and Rhode Island on Friday targeting the Trump administration’s delays and abrupt cuts to grants issued by the National Institute of Health and attempts to dismantle three federal agencies that provide support and funding to libraries, museums and minority-owned businesses.
Democratic attorneys general in 19 other states filed their own lawsuit Thursday seeking to overturn Trump’s elections executive order, but Rayfield said it made sense for Oregon and Washington to work together.
The two northwestern states pioneered laws opposed by Trump that expanded ballot access, including Oregon’s switch to all-mail voting in 2000 and Washington’s switch in 2011. Washington began allowing the counting of ballots that were postmarked by Election Day long before Oregon started doing so in 2022, and advocates for ballot access have long pointed to the northwestern states as a laboratory for modern elections.
“Washington and Oregon are incredibly unique when it comes to our electoral system,” Rayfield said. “We pride ourselves on our elections — vote by mail, our voters pamphlet statements, so many different unique things that go on in the Pacific Northwest, where we were first in this space.”
He and Brown also wanted the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which historically has favored the kinds of progressive laws passed in states like Oregon and Washington, to have a distinct precedent on election laws, Rayfield said.
Trump’s executive order would require voters to prove citizenship — they now only have to attest to being eligible to vote with the understanding that voting illegally could lead to fines and prison time. And it would prohibit states from counting ballots that were postmarked on or before Election Day but arrive later. About 13,500 Oregon voters in the last election would have had their ballots tossed under that provision, Rayfield said.
He and Brown are seeking a court order declaring nearly all of Trump’s executive order unconstitutional.
Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read added in a statement that it’s the state’s responsibility to defend citizens’ right to hold their politicians accountable at the ballot box.
“The Trump administration does not have the power to take away Oregonians’ rights to vote and the funding we need to run secure elections,” Read said. “This executive order is nonsense. It’s illegal. And it will not stand.”
Thousands of Oregonians showed their support for Oregon’s election system earlier this week, slowing the Legislature’s website to a crawl by submitting more than 11,300 pieces of written testimony slamming a Republican senator’s proposed ballot referral ending mail voting.
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.