On Saturday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1461, the New Motor Voter Act, which will automatically register people to vote through the DMV, and could result in illegal aliens voting.
Any person who renewed or secured a driver’s license through the DMV may now register to vote, or choose to opt out of doing so. Because illegal immigrants are now eligible for obtaining driver’s licenses, they could be allowed to vote in elections if the Secretary of State’s office fails to verify their eligibility properly.
Brown and the California Democratic party know exactly what they are doing; as a Public Policy Institute survey showed, among unregistered adults, 49% lean toward the Democratic Party and 22% toward the Republican Party. Any bill permitting illegal immigrants to vote would cement the Democratic Party’s hold on California.
True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht stated, “This bill is terrible. It makes an already bad situation much, much worse,” adding that California’s registration databases “lack the necessary safeguards to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls.”
Election Integrity Project of California President Linda Paine echoed that AB 1461 “will effectively change the form of governance in California from a Republic whose elected officials are determined by United States citizens and will guarantee that noncitizens will participate in all California elections going forward.” The Election Integrity Project of California had joined True the Vote to demand that brown veto the bill, calling it a path to “‘state sanctioned’ voter fraud.”
Although noncitizens’ driver’s licenses in California feature the phrases “Federal Limits Apply” and “not valid for official federal purposes,” True the Vote spokesman Logan Churchwell pointed out that state officials “specifically chose not to make noncitizen license holders searchable in their DMV database.”
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla countered that the increase in voters will benefit the state, arguing, “The New Motor Voter Act will make our democracy stronger by removing a key barrier to voting for millions of California citizens. Citizens should not be required to opt in to their fundamental right to vote. We do not have to opt in to other rights, such as free speech or due process.”
California follows Oregon, where Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill in March allowing the automatic registration of all eligible Oregonians to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state identification card.
But Stephen Frank of California Political Review bluntly asserted that the bill will reduce voter turnout because voters will sniff fraud in the polls: “AB 1461 assures corruption of our elections–our elections will look like those of Mexico and other corrupt nations–and honest people will stop voting since illegal aliens will out vote them.”