REGISTRATION

that the system could allow noncitizens to vote, even as officials and experts point out that’s happened only a handful of times.

Republican state Sen. John Moorlach said he is not sure whether California’s registration mistakes could have changed the results of any election, but the past year has proved the state needs to make several improvements to its registration system “so we don’t make a mockery of the process.” He voted against enacting automatic voter registration in 2015.

“It seems to me if you’re voting and not a U.S. citizen, that’s a serious crime,” Moorlach said. “The irony is we’re making such a big deal in Russia’s supposed involvement in the 2016 election, and here we have actual abuse in voting and potential voter fraud and mismanagement of voter registration.”

Earlier this month, three Republican California voters, two of whom are naturalized citizens, sued Democratic Secretary of State Alex Padilla and DMV Director Steve Gordon over the errors, accusing them of “a pattern and practice of doing nothing to verify that a potential voter is a United States citizen, thus causing non-citizens to be placed on the voter rolls.”

The law firm representing the plaintiffs is run by the former vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party, Harmeet Dhillon.

The lawsuit calls on state officials to develop a better system to prevent future citizen-related errors. Mark Meuser, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said state agencies struggle to maintain databases and share information to keep voter rolls accurate.

“There’s a much bigger problem than noncitizens voting,” said Meuser, who lost a 2018 Republican bid for California secretary of state. “I’m much more concerned about the integrity of our system and people thinking their vote is diluted.”

Meuser said he thinks Californians are worried about a program that made 105,000 voter registration errors and allowed an unknown number of noncitizens to be added to the voter rolls. At least 1,500 people who are ineligible to vote were registered in the months following the April 2018 rollout, election officials said, six of whom voted in the midterm elections, according to a state review.

The California DMV would not comment to Stateline about any aspect of automatic voter registration because of pending litigation. Padilla’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In response to the lawsuit, Padilla told the Sacramento Bee at the time, “The plaintiffs claim they are protecting voters, but this is nothing more than an underhanded attempt to bring their voter suppression playbook to California.”

DMV officials have said they added safeguards and other protections to their processes to prevent future errors.

An independent audit – ordered in September 2018 by then-gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and released in February 2019 – found that California’s registration program was “confusing to the public,” among other issues outlined in the 113-page report about the months after the error-laden rollout.

Automatic voter registration works, said Myrna Perez, director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, but she stressed that states need to prevent avoidable mistakes.

Using tools ranging from public information campaigns to soft rollouts to further testing among county clerks and DMV workers, she said, states should be able to filter out noncitizens.

“Automatic voter registration has been shown to effectively increase registration in states big and small, blue and red, rural and urban, all across the country,” she said, citing Brennan Center research. “But like any policy, it needs to be designed strategically and smartly.”