San Anselmo, Fairfax Assemblyman Wants to See Easier Voter Registration at the DMV

The following was submitted for publication by the office of Assemblymember Marc Levine:

Assemblymember Marc Levine (D-San Rafael) has authored legislation to require the California Department of Motor Vehicles to fully comply with federal law that requires that the application for a driver’s license also serves as a voter registration form for those who are eligible to vote.

“In 1993, Congress signed into law a measure intended to make it easy for Americans to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license. More than two decades later, California has yet to comply with that law. It is unacceptable for the DMV to ignore federal law,” said Assemblymember Levine. “We need to make it easy for Californians to register to vote. AB 786 will require the DMV to finally begin complying with a 22 year old federal law by allowing eligible voters to utilize the driver’s license application as a voter registration form as well.”

AB 786 would require the DMV to automatically send voter registration information to the Secretary of State whenever a person gets a new California driver’s license and certifies that s/he is eligible to vote in California. Compliance with these changes in California law would bring California into full compliance with related provisions of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, otherwise known as “Motor Voter”.

“The DMV must stop dragging its feet and fully implement Motor Voter registration. California has a dismal rate of voter registration and the DMV should be a critical access point for participating in our democracy,” said Helen Hutchison, president of the League of Women Voters of California.

“Registering to vote at the DMV should be easy and seamless. Instead of creating barriers, we should be creating express lanes for full voter participation,” said Kathay Feng of California Common Cause.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla is also making full compliance at the DMV a priority.

Motor Voter was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton to make it easier to register to vote, and thereby enhance “the participation of eligible citizens as voters in elections.” However, California has failed to fully implement various critical provisions of Motor Voter.

Citing clear evidence that the State of California is violating its federally-mandated responsibility to offer California drivers and ID card holders the opportunity to register to vote, attorneys from the ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties, Demos, Project Vote, and the law firm Morrison & Foerster sent a pre-litigation notice letter in February to the California Secretary of State on behalf of the League of Women Voters of California, ACCE Institute, California Common Cause, the National Council of La Raza, and several individual California citizens.

That letter details the Motor Voter violations by DMV and other state agencies and demands immediate action to bring the state into full compliance with the law or face litigation. Among other problems, the letter describes how DMV procedures unlawfully require applicants to complete an entirely separate voter registration application and provide the same information required on the driver’s license and ID card forms. These violations, and additional problems with how change-of-address, mail, and online transactions are processed, impede rather than facilitate the ability of applicants to register to vote or update their registrations.

More information about the letter is available online at https://www.aclusandiego.org/enforce-motor-voter/ and http://lwvc.org/statement/2015/feb/voting-rigts-groups-move-enforce-motor-voter-california.

Additionally, under current DMV procedures, voters occasionally are removed from the voter rolls in error when the voter notifies DMV of a change of address. In many cases, when a voter moves from one county to another, DMV and the counties do not share information and coordinate. Consequently, the voter may be removed from the rolls of the county that the voter left but is not yet added to the rolls of the county to which the voter is moving.

This means that the voter is not registered to vote anywhere even though the voter intends to vote and believed that by making the change of address at DMV, this change would automatically update the voter registration as well.

AB 786 will correct this anomaly.

(Patch file photo by Renee Schiavone)