DMV missed deadline for some voters
SACRAMENTO — Officials at the California Department of Motor Vehicles said Friday that the agency failed to send information for 329 new voters to state elections officers in time for the November election, the latest revelation in a string of mishaps regarding voter registration.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla responded with a blistering letter, calling on Gov. Jerry Brown or Gov.elect Gavin Newsom to replace Jean Shiomoto, the DMV director.
“The director of DMV has lost my confidence and trust,” Padilla wrote.
In all, the agency revealed that 589 mailed voter registration records that should have been processed under election deadlines weren’t sent to California’s secretary of state until late November, including forms from 260 drivers who had intended to update their address on existing voter registration records.
The DMV had been instructed to not send registration forms that came in after Oct. 22, but the voters in question had forms that were postmarked before the deadline. In some cases, when the postmark wasn’t legible, the agency said, documents inside indicated the voter had intended to finish their registration in time for the Nov. 6 election.
“The DMV recognizes the pause in transmittals was an error and affected the timing of the registration of the 589 individuals referenced above relative to the November election,” Shiomoto wrote in a letter to Padilla on Friday. “The pause was due to a misunderstanding on the part of the department, for which we take responsibility.”
Those who were trying to update their address for voter registration would not have been blocked from casting ballots. But officials said it’s unclear whether any of the 329 new voters were able to participate in the election. Shiomoto said in her letter that the DMV will work with elections officials.
The errors were not related to previous DMV mistakes about registering voters, problems associated with the rollout of the state’s new “motor voter” law. In those cases, multiple registration forms were sent to local elections offices for some voters, some people were assigned the wrong political party preference and others who are noncitizens were incorrectly placed on the list of registered voters. DMV officials have yet to respond to questions posed by The Times over the last several weeks about who knew of those mistakes and when.