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Oregon elections director - who previously worked for Clear Ballot - was fired just after the 2020 election. Why? Oregon elections director out after penning a blistering memo By Dirk VanderHart (OPB) Nov. 9, 2020 12:37 p.m. Updated: Nov. 9, 2020 3 p.m. Steve Trout says he was fired Thursday. Days earlier, he sharply criticized the secretary of state’s office for a “lack of vision and leadership.” Steve Trout, who was tapped for a second stint managing Oregon elections in 2017, served his last day on Friday, according to the secretary of state’s office. Trout’s former deputy, Michelle Teed, is serving as acting elections director, according to Andrea Chiapella, chief of staff for Secretary of State Bev Clarno. “Steve gave us notice that he would be leaving the agency and in order to ensure a smooth transition, his last day was Friday,” Chiapella said Saturday evening. “We appreciate all of his great work as elections director and we are lucky to have had such a knowledgeable advocate for the democratic process on our team.” Trout said Monday he was actually fired via text message last Thursday, after raising serious concerns about the office and informing Clarno he was seeking other work. He said he had committed to staying on with the secretary of state’s office until December 15, in order to complete duties associated with the election. In this Nov. 3, 2020 file photo, election workers organize ballots at the Multnomah County Elections Division in Portland, Ore. Oregon's elections director was abruptly fired in a text message by the secretary of state after he pointed out serious issues with the state's aging and vulnerable technology for running elections. “I would not abandon my staff or the counties before the election is over, especially since I was the only one at the SOS office with a security clearance that could be notified of any election attacks during this certification process,” Trout wrote in an email. “There is no resignation letter because I didn’t resign. I was laid off via text message late Thursday.” A memo Trout sent last week to secretary of state candidates provides more context to his dismissal. In the damning letter to Secretary of State-elect Shemia Fagan and her opponent, state Sen. Kim Thatcher, Trout laid out a litany of challenges faced by the elections division. He said that the secretary of state’s office, which has been run by four people since 2015, suffered from “a lack of strategic vision and plans for the agency, and staff are not focused due to that lack of vision and leadership.” Part of that, Trout wrote in the letter sent on the eve of the election, was due to former Secretary of State Dennis Richardson dying of cancer in 2019, which, he noted, “was no one’s fault.” While Trout touted strong partnerships with federal agencies in addressing threats and disinformation in Oregon elections, he said the elections division has been denied resources. He laid out 12 specific upgrades he’d requested for state election systems that had not been funded — projects such as a replacement for the state’s ORESTAR website, security upgrades and fixing dozens of bugs within elections systems. “Some of our election systems are running on Windows Server 2008,” Trout wrote. “End-of-life mainstream support from Microsoft ended back on January 13, 2015, and all support ended on January 14, 2020. Our public facing websites are single threaded through one power supply on the capitol mall and one internet connection. There is no redundancy or resiliency or plan to provide either.” Trout also said that the elections division is among the first places that sees budget cuts in tough times, and he complained that lawmakers had not authorized officials to spend nearly $12 million made available by the federal CARES Act. He also noted that lawmakers had rejected a request for a “social media/public records” position, even as the number of public records requests spiked. pg1