The California Department of Motor Vehicles is under fire after it was discovered that illegal aliens in the state had been registered to vote.
The problem came to light when the Los Angeles Times ran a story on Canadian who found he was mistakenly registered to vote while trying to replace his driver’s license, prompting a closer look by the paper and authorities.
The AP News reports that this is just one of many issues the CADMV has been experiencing.
The DMV said about 1,500 people may have been incorrectly registered between April 23 and Sept. 25 because of a “processing error.” That includes legal residents who are not citizens, although the DMV says none of the people mistakenly registered are people living in the country illegally.
Incorrect registrations will be canceled by the secretary of state, DMV spokeswoman Jessica Gonzalez said.
DMV Director Jean Shiomoto and California Department of Technology Director Amy Tong notified the secretary of state about the problem in a Monday letter. It’s the latest issue the department has reported with its new “motor voter” registration system. Last month, the department announced it may have botched about 23,000 voter registrations because of a separate error.
“Motor voter” registration is new California law and automatically enrolls residents to vote when they renew their driver’s license. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine all of the chaos and red tape such a program would cause, but it is exacerbated in a state like California that also has decided to allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses. Added to this sudden addition of millions of people to the DMV rolls is the reality that every driver in the state must be switched over to the new federal smart IDs no later than 2020. Even though California has had nearly a decade to prepare, they’ve done very little to add more DMV offices and hire more employees to relieve the backlog. Wait times as long as seven hours are being reported at some DMVs and politicians have begun calling for an audit of the DMV.
“I remain deeply frustrated and disappointed that persistent errors by the DMV and CDT have undermined public confidence,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla wrote in a letter calling for an audit.
The DMV discovered the errors after the Los Angeles Times inquired about a Canadian who was incorrectly registered, the paper reported. The green card holder contacted the Times after he was mistakenly registered when he tried to replace his driver’s license at the DMV, the paper reported .
The department is working quickly to fix the problem, Shiomoto said.
If “motor voter” laws automatically register every license holder, how exactly does the CADMV distinguish between legal and non-legal residents when enrolling them? No one seems to have the answer to this question, but one suspects the real answer is…they don’t.
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