Legislative Report - September Legislative Days

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• Campaign Finance

• Legislative Report Interim Technology, Cybersecurity

Governance

By Norman Turrill, Governance Coordinator, and Rebecca Gladstone

The House and Senate Rules committees met during the interim days last week. Senate Rules met Sept. 24 to consider various executive appointments. House Rules met Sept. 25 to hear testimony about some 1259 errors made at the Dept. of Motor Vehicles in forwarding records for non-citizens to the Secretary of State for voter registrations. The good news was that only 9 of these people actually voted (out of more than 3 million registered voters), and none of them affected the results of any election. The mistakes were made by the DMV, not by the SoS, nor by the non-citizens. The DMV has stated that the errors have been corrected, will not impact the November election, and will not happen again.

Campaign Finance

A CFR workgroup called by Rep. Fahey began meeting via video conferencing June 3. The work group’s goals are to identify technical adjustments needed to ensure successful implementation of HB 4024 (2024), to recommend legislative fixes for 2025, and to consider broader policy improvements for future sessions. The workgroup includes most of the groups from business, labor and Honest Elections that negotiated on HB 4024. The LWVOR is represented by Norman Turrill. Honest Elections representatives have been disappointed that the other workgroup members have so far been unresponsive to suggested changes to HB 4024.

Legislative Report Interim Technology, Cybersecurity

By Becky Gladstone

This section addresses this volunteer’s current projects and a few interim topics from the Joint Committee on Information Management & Technology, JCIMT, for AI, linked to cyber and election security.

Oregon GEOHub app exploration: Rep. Gomberg submitted a legislative concept at our request, to resemble our Vote411.org for incumbents, like our printed They Represent You. This could be more comprehensive than the LWV Find Your Elected Officials or the OLIS Find Your Legislator. Importantly, it could help facilitate data compatibility improvements between various stakeholders we’re working with in the DoR Tax Districts workgroup, for ORMAP Tools.

OLIS video navigation buttons. The League is requesting the insertion of 10 or 15 second forward and back navigation buttons for OLIS video recordings, since we listen carefully, to cite deliberations accurately, and toggling the time bar is awkward. Staff will request these OLIS video player buttons from the 3rd-party vendor. They suggest we cite OLIS users' support for this improvement, from legislative staff to lobbyists to interested citizens. Watch for more information.

A few Interim Technology topics: See the JCIMT agenda, materials, and video. This ambitious, well-run, compatible committee has excellent grounding from Co-Chairs with relevant professional experience, to a highly engaged, diverse membership. Sean McSpaden, Committee Admin, serves as Oregon’s representative to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), Taskforce on Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Privacy, where states are collaborating to improve cyber defenses. They will be working on the following subjects heading into the 2025 session, including anticipating our bill on a GEOHub app to Find Your Legislators.

• An AI update, HB 4153 Enrolled (2024): AI is expanding our abilities, to better present existing data, for example augmenting wildfire monitoring, with cameras up 99% of the time, supporting human observers. See the OSU Wildfire Map. We recommend subscribing to Watch Duty for fires and Shake Alert for quakes. AI is more of a discipline than a technology, note the 2024 OR Cyber Resilience Summit theme, Cybersecurity in an AI World. The vigorous Oregon Cyber Advisory Council has compiled 78 recommendations, aware of concerns that AI could replace humans and ensuring that humans be in these loops, more freed from tedium to improve public service access.

• Cyber attacks: AI might become helpful to protect against false information blasts, against elections work and media, and cyber attacks. Think “big data” sized attacks. The WA Employment Division breach was mentioned.

• Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding: Challenges include workforce and supply chain shortages and permitting complexities. A common state permitting app, across all Oregon governments, is a candidate’s hope.

• A cyber placeholder bill, expect another, no mention of data centers yet.

• Protective phone and tablet settings for minors, change to opt-out instead of opt-in settings.