As critics predicted, the New Motor Voter Act signed into law in 2015 by California Gov. Jerry Brown has opened the door to potential voter fraud, including non-citizens being able to vote.
On Monday, officials from the DMV and California Department of Technology conceded in a letter to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla that 1,500 people were improperly registered to vote, including non-citizens.
In the letter, officials claim none of those registered were “undocumented immigrants who received a driver license” under AB 60, the 2013 legislation requiring the state give anyone “who is unable to submit satisfactory proof of legal presence in the United States” a driver license.
That assurance should be taken with a grain or two of salt considering DMV spokeswoman Jessica Gonzalez asserted in March that “to be eligible, you have to be a U.S. citizen.” Of course, as the evidence clearly demonstrates, one does not need to be eligible to vote under the New Motor Voter Act in order to register to vote.
Maybe more than a couple of grains considering the admission foreign nations were registered to vote was made less than two months after the agency confessed to erroneously sending out 23,000 voter registrations.
In Monday’s letter, officials contend changes have been made that will add “safeguards to ensure only records for customers affirming eligibility” before registrations are processed. But how can the electoral system be safeguarded when the individual responsible for determining eligibility is the applicant?
Critics of the motor voter program were voicing concerns before it was enacted and continue to highlight the real danger of giving more than a million illegal aliens driver’s licenses and access to the voting process.
“If you are talking about California, the state is apparently relying on the illegal alien to tell the state they shouldn’t be registered. There is still an honor system,” noted Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, in a 2017 interview.
The state of California can continue to blame glitches and system errors, but the only solution to prevent further compromises of the election process is to repeal the state’s New Motor Voter law, and AB 60, which grants people who have no legal right to be in the country driving privileges.