How a Religious Cult Changed the Way Oregon Runs Its Elections

Hello again, Feed Your Curiosity! reader. Thank you for sticking around through the long hiatus of this fledgling newsletter. I'm back with a new story about a historic case of attempted voter fraud. I know, you're probably over election season. Bear with me, I promise you'll enjoy this.

This Case of Attempted Voter Fraud Altered Oregon’s Elections

Tomorrow is election day in the United States. After what feels like an endless onslaught of political news, polls, and attack ads, voters across the country will cast ballots in one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history.

But not me: I voted weeks ago. How?

I live in Oregon, which is widely regarded as the easiest state to vote in. Over several decades, our elections system has increased voter access to unprecedented levels. We've voted by mail for most elections since 1987. The Beaver State dumped polling places outright and adopted universal mail voting for all elections in 1999. In 2015, we notched another win in the fight for increased voter access: We adopted automatic voter registration (commonly known as Motor Voter). Oh, our elections are secure, too.

There is one area where Oregon is an outlier in voting access: Same-day registration. As of 2022, 22 states and Washington, D.C., allow day-of voter registration. Oregon used to. So why doesn't it now? It's a wild story complete with a religious cult, an attempted political takeover of a rural Oregon county, and the largest bioterrorism attack in U.S. history.

Years before Oregonians cast our first mail ballots, we enjoyed the benefits of same-day voter registration. From 1975-1985, it was a simple and quick process to register at the polls. But a controversial Wasco County election in November 1984 doomed that practice here.

You may be familiar with the main cast of characters in this story. A powerful Indian mystic and some of his most devout followers bought a ranch in the Oregon desert in 1981, intending to establish a utopia. Conflict with the local community quickly ensued. Some people were hurt. And it quickly spiraled into a national scandal. The saga of Rajneeshpuram was the subject of the 2018 Netflix documentary "Wild Wild County." (If you haven't seen this documentary series yet, fix that ASAP.) That same group is behind the most restrictive voting law in Oregon.

A few years into the Rajneeshees experiment in Oregon, the cult flex its political power by taking control of the small nearby town of Antelope, and changing its name to Rajneesh. Next, the group set its sights on a bigger target: The county government. In 1984, they backed their own group of write-in candidates for two vacant spots on the county commission in an effort to take control of Wasco County.

There was a problem, though. Despite their utopian dreams leading to a large influx of followers (estimates put Rajneeshpuram's population at around 7,000 by 1984), the rest of Wasco County still outnumbered the group. Not detered by the numbers, the cult's leaders hatched a plan to sicken Wasco County officials and citizens alike, in an effort to suppress the vote on Election Day. The weapon of choice: salmonella. The goal was to contaminate the water system of The Dalles, the largest city in the county.

To test out their plan, they started on a smaller scale. On trips to The Dalles, members of the group sprinkled salmonella on salad bars across the city. More than 700 people were sickened in the attack, and health officials from across the country descended on The Dalles to investigate — I briefly covered this in my last installment of Feed Your Curiosity. That brought a level of attention to this rural county that caused the group's leaders to halt this plan.

Despite the heat, the Rajneeshees' weren't deterred in their goal of overtaking the Wasco County government. They had another plan: flood the county's voter roles with sympathetic voters. Over the course of several weeks, leaders bussed thousands of houseless residents from across the United States to their compound, Rajneeshpuram. With the promise of food and work, they set these new "residents" up with a place to stay and attempted to register them as voters.

But again, they were caught early in their efforts. The Wasco County clerk froze new voter registration in early October, citing concerns of voter fraud. A federal judge upheld the ruling after the cult tried to sue to overturn the county clerk's decision. "I think we're all agreed the system faces a threat," Judge Edward Leavy said at the time. Combined with other drama unfolding in the community, this proved to be the beginning of the end of Rajneeshpuram.

Spurred to action by the near coup of Wasco County's electoral process, Oregon lawmakers made it more difficult to register to vote the following year. The Legislature first passed a new voter registration deadline of 5 p.m. the day before any election. By the following November, Oregon voters were given a chance to weigh in via a ballot measure. 1986's Measure 13 passed by a 2-1 margin and set the new voter registration deadline which stands to this day: at least 21 days prior to an election.

That's not to say Oregon will forever prohibit same-day voter registration. Current Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan told the Statesman Journal in August 2022 that she is pushing for the state to return to same-day voter registration. Fagan, who was a child in Wasco County when the Rajneeshees were moving to take over county politics, doesn't buy that same-day voter registration was the problem back then. Instead, she sees our current voter registration deadline as unhospitable to the long-held Oregon objective of making voting more accessible.

As the state's top election official, she's in a unique position of power to bring back same-day registration. But seeing as Measure 13 changed Oregon's Consitution, it won't be easy to undo the will of 1980s Oregonians.

🧠 Brain food

What else has been feeding my curiosity lately? Here are some stories that have fueled my brain lately.

In the fall, millions of people changed their clocks back for what they hope will be the last time. Lawmakers at both the state and federal levels are clambering to ditch the twice-annual time change in favor of year-round daylight saving time. But we've been here before and the last time we attempted to abandon standard (as in, natural) time was nothing short of a disaster.

We've all heard the story of Orson Welles 1938 radio drama presentation of "War of the Worlds." Confused listeners, unaware this was a radio play, were stricken with panic, worried that Martians were invading New York. Except, that panic has largely been debunked. That's what made this story of a Spanish-language radio drama also based on "War of the Worlds" so fascinating to me. In 1949, Radio Quito put on a presentation of the famous H.G. Wells story that was so believable, it led to chaos and violence in the streets of the Ecuadorian capital. This story was originally reported in Spanish for Radio Ambulante in 2020.

Sorry if I just fueled your future nightmares with the photo above, but I couldn't leave you without this mind-blowing photo of ... an ant. This 5X objective lens magnification closeup by Dr. Eugenijus Kavaliauskas was recognized as an Image of Distinction in the 2022 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. I'd never heard of this competition until this terrifying image swept the internet. Kudos to the photographers and scientists out there capturing the wonders of the world that we'd otherwise miss.

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