California Motor Voter Bill Could Allow Noncitizens to Vote

By Joe Guzzardi
October 26, 2015

Last week, in his latest assault on California’s citizens and legal residents, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1461, the New Motor Voter Act, which will allow the Department of Motor Vehicles to automatically register voters when they receive or renew their driver’s licenses. Instant registration will likely result in illegal aliens voting.

Illegal immigrants were granted driving privileges by AB 60 that Brown signed into law in 2013. Early DMV estimates predicted that about 1.4 million licenses could eventually be distributed as a result of that legislation. Since AB 60 took effect at the beginning of the year, 775,000 people have applied for driver’s licenses, and 513,000 have been issued. That pace indicates the final total could be higher than 1.4 million.

To receive a license, an illegal alien’s only requirement is to prove California residency, provide what’s deemed adequate identification, and pass the vision, written and practical tests. DMV offers the written test in ten different languages, problematic for those who worry that alien drivers may not be able to read or understand road signage.

AB 1461 opens a quagmire for potential voter fraud. Unless California’s Secretary of State can confirm the citizenship status of potential voters – a huge challenge even assuming the state is willing to undertake it – noncitizens will be voting.
 
Organizations throughout California that fight to protect voting integrity are outraged. True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht told Breitbart News that AB 1461 makes a bad voter fraud situation in the state “much, much worse” because California’s registration databases “lack the necessary safeguards to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls.” Spokesman Logan Churchwell from True the Vote pointed out that state officials “specifically chose not to make noncitizen license holders searchable in their DMV database.”
 
Another organization, Election Integrity Project of California, said through its President Linda Paine that AB 1461 would alter California’s form of governance from a Republic whose elected officials are determined by United States citizens to one which will guarantee that noncitizens will participate in all the state’s future elections.
 
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla argues that automatic registration will benefit the state by removing voting barriers for citizens which will make democracy stronger. Padilla did not address voter fraud potential.
 
Beyond voter fraud, a larger threat looms. After the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the REAL ID Act to prevent foreign nationals from fraudulently obtaining a U.S. driver’s license by requiring that IDs issued based on unverifiable foreign documents look noticeably different in “design or color” from the official driver's license. Many of the 9/11 terrorist held driver’s licenses.
 
More than a decade later, however, California joins several other states that brazenly flout REAL ID by issuing licenses that are barely distinguishable from a bona fide driver’s license, and could create a huge security gap at the airport or other public places.
 
Brown’s latest politically craven illegal immigrant outreach is another attack on the law and an insult to California’s citizens. AB 1461 that opens the door for illegal immigrants to vote will cement the Democratic Party’s future indefinitely. The Public Policy Institute of California found that among the state’s unregistered voters, 49 percent lean Democrat.
 
Rejecting Padilla’s claim that AB 1461 will benefit Californians, the California Political Review’s Stephen Frank expects that the bill will reduce voter turnout because voters will be turned off by the obvious fraud. Frank ominously predicted that AB 1461 will assure corrupt elections like those in Third World countries.
 
Brown knows, perhaps happily, that honest, engaged citizens will stop voting since illegal aliens will outnumber them at the polls.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact him at [email protected]