California’s new motor voter law has taken effect, even if it is not yet in massive use. So far the sky has not fallen.
That was the prediction from many Republicans the moment Gov. Brown signed the new measure into law last fall. Many GOP activists predicted it would lead to “state-sanctioned voter fraud” and flood the voting rolls with non-citizens.
It has not happened, and probably never will.
That is because the same rules that prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving the same type of California driver’s license as citizens or legal residents will apply to everyone automatically registered to vote during visits to Dept. of Motor Vehicles offices.
The law registers every eligible Californian who goes to the DMV to get a driver’s license or renew one. Once Secretary of State Alex Padilla has set up specific procedure to be followed in all offices, every eligible person who does not opt out will be registered. The opt-out option will be offered to everyone qualified to vote.
The fears of many Republicans stem from the fact that many new driver’s license applicants today are Latinos and their participation rate in the last few elections has hovered just above 15 percent, the lowest for any ethnic group. Asian-Americans are next lowest.
The GOP knows that Latinos who do vote have long gone mostly Democratic, one reason some Republicans give for opposing a path to citizenship for the undocumented. The subtext of that opposition is simple: Make citizenship available to undocumented Hispanic immigrants and then make voting easy for them and the existing huge Democratic voter registration pluralities in California and elsewhere will become even more pronounced.
This is one reason Republicans in many other states have made voter registration and voting itself more difficult for everyone, requiring some kind of official photo identification before even registered voters can get a ballot to fill out.
California’s new law also requires photo ID, something GOP critics of the new law – passed without Republican support in the Legislature – ignore.
A quick visit to the DMV’s website (https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_content_en/dmv/dl/dl_info#two500) reveals that besides passing written and road tests, recipients of new legal-resident drivers licenses must show a Social Security card and prove their “legal presence” in California and the nation.
Close Vetting?
That proof can be a birth certificate, a passport, an immigration green card or even Border Patrol crossing cards and Mexican consular IDs. Only those whose identification proves they are eligible to vote will automatically be registered.
That is why Mr. Padilla could confidently say after Mr. Brown signed the new law that “we have built the protocols and the firewalls to not register people that aren’t eligible. We are going to keep those firewalls in place.” They have been up for years.
The Tea Party and other conservative organizations that oppose making voting easier for eligible citizens ignore all this.
“The law…will guarantee that non-citizens will participate in all California elections going forward,” Linda Paine, president of the Election Integrity Project of California, told a reporter. The new law, her website added, “facilitates non-citizens to register and vote with prosecutorial immunity and will break down the integrity of California’s election process to the point that it cannot be repaired.”
But the DMV rules make it easy for any clerk to tell who is an eligible voter, and Mr. Padilla promises the procedure he is still setting up will ensure even more security.
Registering to vote always has required showing some of the same documentation needed for a driver’s license. Forged versions of those documents are no easier or harder to obtain now than before. Which means that voter fraud – a negligible phenomenon in California up to now – figures to remain at about the same very low levels as ever.
Yet, conservative Republicans who have long asserted – with no proof – that the undocumented vote in large numbers, insist there will be much more fraud. “This assures corruption of our elections,” Stephen Frank, former president of the California Republican Assembly, wrote on his blog. “Our elections will look like those of Mexico and other corrupt nations and honest people will stop voting since illegal aliens will outvote them.”
Mr. Frank and other conservatives insist the sky is falling – but a quick look outside demonstrates that is not so.
Mr. Elias may be contacted at tdelias@aol.com. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
