Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson said Friday that his office has detected 54 instances of what it believes is voter fraud during Oregon's November 2016 election.

His agency has turned over information about those cases to Ellen Rosenblum, the Oregon attorney general, for use in potential criminal prosecutions.

Richardson, Oregon's head elections officer, said his agency found: 46 people who appear to have voted in two states, six deceased people who had ballots cast in their name and two people who appear to have voted twice.

"We've turned this information over to the attorney general," Richardson said in a taped announcement from the Capitol steps, in Salem. "There will be a criminal investigation."

Rosenblum has not made a statement regarding the information handed over by Richardson. The Oregon Department of Justice is "reviewing the materials" sent by Richardson, said spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson.

Richardson also cautioned that the number of potentially fraudulent ballots cast is low and would not have affected the outcome of any elections.

"These are very low numbers compared to the amount of ballots that have been turned in," he said. One in 38,000 ballots cast last year turned out to be suspicious, Richardson said, or 0.002 percent of votes cast.

He said that although illegal voting is far from widespread, his agency will not tolerate it at any level.

"Voters in Oregon can be confident that voter fraud is extremely rare in our state," Richardson said, "and when we do find it, we will prosecute."

At least some of the potentially-illegal votes were identified through a multi-state consortium that crosschecks voter registration data called the Electronic Registration Information Center, said Deb Royal, chief of staff to Richardson.

Some have panned officials' use of the system, saying most ballots it flags as suspicious end up benign. However, the Pew Charitable Trusts, which provided seed funding to the consortium, said its use has helped states maintain more accurate voter rolls.

Richardson's announcement Friday contradicts statements the secretary made to President Trump in a February letter. In that letter, Richardson rebuked Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud and said he is "confident that voter fraud in last November's election did not occur in Oregon."

Richardson has largely cooperated with a Trump-appointed commission investigating election integrity. He turned over Oregon's publicly available voter database to the commission for $500, the standard price.

-- Gordon R. Friedman

503-221-8209; @GordonRFriedman