Illegal immigrants in California could soon be voting thanks to a new policy that will start automatically registering adults who get or renew a driver’s license to vote.
California has since 2015 granted driver’s licenses to immigrants living illegally in the state. And an estimated 1 million of those immigrants are believed to have obtained a license by the end of last year. Under the new system, which begins April 1, anyone who already has a valid license and applies for renewal in person or by mail could potentially be added to the voter registration rolls by claiming they are legal. […]
The only way drivers who say they are legal won’t have their information sent to state voter rolls under the latest implementation of the California Motor Voter Act is if they opt out -- which opens the door to the potential of widespread voter fraud… (Fox News)
“You’re setting the state up for a disaster. They don’t seem to have a process in place to verify that people are who they say they are. It’s a free-for-all, a process that can be manipulated,” said True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht, reports Fox News.
After observing the operations of a number of DMV offices, Linda Paine, cofound of Election Integrity Project of California, said she was not confident adequate safeguards are in place to prevent illegal voter registration.
“There are thousands and thousands of DMV workers across our huge state,” Paine told Fox News. “They’re not all trained. There’s no actual protection to prevent noncitizens from being added to voter rolls. It’s not even that people who are ineligible want to be registered. They may not know that they have to select ‘Opt out.’”
Voting rights advocacy groups argue, however, that immigrants will not risk their chance of legalizing their status here over voting.
“As is already required by federal law, anyone who registers to vote at the DMV must attest under penalty of perjury that they meet eligibility requirements — including citizenship. Moreover, under state law, the DMV is prohibited from sending to the Secretary of State any information from persons who apply for an AB60 California driver license,” Secretary of State spokesman Sam Mahood said in a statement.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles further disputes the possibility the new policy could be manipulated.
"When the California DMV begins the New California Motor Voter Program in April 2018, undocumented Californians can NOT register to vote. It is not possible," Jessica Gonzalez, spokesperson for the California DMV, told Townhall in an emailed statement. "DMV has programming measures to prevent that from occurring. One example is the technician is unable to enter information that would allow the undocumented customer to register. It is automatically greyed out and cannot be bypassed."
This story has been updated.
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