California DMV Accidentally Registers 1,500 To Vote

Some 1,500 drivers, some of which included non-citizens, were improperly registered to vote under California's "Motor Voter" program the California Department of Motor Vehicles announced Monday. 

Officials with the agency sent a letter to California's Secretary of State Alex Padilla, saying they discovered the administrative processing error and have fixed the glitch that caused the erroneous voter registrations.

“We have worked quickly with the Department of Technology to correct these errors and have also updated the programming and added additional safeguards to improve this process,” DMV Director Jean Shiomoto said in a statement Monday.

In April, the California DMV began automatically registering eligible citizens who obtain or renew their driver's license, unless that person decides to opt-out of the process. 

According to the DMV, none of the people who improperly registered were illegal immigrants who obtained a license through the state's AB-60 law, which has granted more than 1 million drivers licenses to people living in the country illegally. 

California Assemblyman Jim Patterson says the DMV's Motor Voter program needs to be shut down. 

"They shouldn't even be attempting it, when they can't register our cars properly," Patterson told KFI News. 

This isn't the first snafu California's DMV has endured in recent months. In September, officials admitted that up to 23,000 Californians were registered to vote incorrectly by the state, including many people who were assigned the incorrect party preference.  

Tens of thousands of errors in the Motor Voter program take away the program's credibility Patterson said. 

"It doesn't matter whether they've done it by mistake, or whether there was some kind of intention behind it," Patterson said. 

“We have worked quickly with the Department of Technology to correct these errors and have also updated the programming and added additional safeguards to improve this process,” Shiomoto said in her statement released Monday.

California's secretary of state has called for an independent third-party to audit the Motor Voter program and that a freeze to the state's Motor Voter program is "certainly on the table" Padilla told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday. 

Padilla says "serious concerns about the method in which (the agencies) have implemented new technologies, the sufficiency of testing and verification prior to implementation, and the transparency of your process to those whose fundamental right to vote may be affected," Padilla wrote in a letter to Shiomoto and Amy Tong, the director of the California Department of Technology.

Individuals who are concerned about the validity of their voter records should check their voter registration status at https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/ they and they can make changes at www.registertovote.ca.gov or call (800) 345-VOTE.

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