DMV accused of violating law on voter registration

Voting-rights advocates accused the state Department of Motor Vehicles on Tuesday of violating the federal “motor voter” law by requiring the more than 1 million Californians who renew their driver’s licenses by mail each year to fill out a separate form to register to vote.

In a federal court lawsuit in San Francisco, the League of Women Voters and other organizations said the 1993 National Voter Registration Act requires states to include voter registration opportunities in their applications to obtain or renew a driver’s license or a state identification card. The California DMV provides a single form, for both voting and driving, to people who apply in person or online, but requires mail-in applicants to fill out a separate form for voter registration, the suit said.

That may be one of the reasons that more than 5.5 million eligible voters in the state are unregistered and that California ranks near the bottom of the states in registration rates, the advocacy groups said.

“It’s an embarrassment that in 2017, more than 20 years after the law was enacted, California DMV is still violating the law by making millions of people jump through hoops to become voters,” Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The DMV issued a statement saying California “has been in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act for decades.” The agency did not explain how the state was complying with the law if, as the votingrights groups alleged, it does not provide a combined license and voterregistration form for mail-in renewals.

The lawsuit, the DMV added, “serves as an unfortunate distraction from ongoing joint efforts by the secretary of state’s office and the DMV to further improve the voter registration process in California, which already exceeds the voter registration obligations” in the federal law.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla, California’s top elections official, has been trying to make voter registration easier in the state. He sponsored a law, enacted in 2015, that would automatically add applicants for driver’s licenses and state ID cards to the voter rolls unless they opted out. The change requires additional state funding, however, and its implementation date is uncertain.

Plaintiffs in Tuesday’s lawsuit said they sent letters to Padilla, DMV Director Jean Shiomoto and Gov. Jerry Brown in February 2015, notifying them of the requirements of federal law and their intention to sue. The state has improved the DMV registration process since then but still fails to provide mail-in applicants with a single form to renew their licenses and register to vote, the suit said.