Last night, a California Assembly panel approved a proposal to automatically register Californians to vote when they get a driver’s license.
The bill was introduced in the Assembly by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) who said she modeled her bill on a new law in Oregon and that it was sorely needed after the 42% record-low turnout in California during last falls statewide races.
“These concerning new lows are unacceptable,” Gonzalez told the Assembly Transportation Committee. “We cannot allow this trends to continue."
Secretary of State Alex Padilla, elected last fall to his first term, testified Monday night that there were about 6.7 million state residents who are eligible to vote but who are not registered.
Padilla said that 40,000 people went to his agency’s website for information on registering to vote after the deadline for signing up in the last election. Under the new law, people who get a driver’s license will be notified they have 21 days to object or they will be registered to vote if eligible.
“We ought to do anything and everything possible to ensure that people participate” in elections, Padilla said.
Needles to say, Republicans were opposed to the bill, which goes to another Assembly committee next. Leading the Republican opposition was none other than Assemblywoman Catharine Baker (R-Idiotville), who said there are already other proposals to address the problem of people who are registered but don’t vote.
This is a direct quote from Ms. Baker:
“I haven’t heard any evidence that the lack of registration is the reason people don’t vote,” Baker said.
What a nitwit.
The California Secretary of State has a chart by county showing the number of registered voters in a county, along with the number of eligible who are not registered and here is the link to the chart:
http://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/...
It's not too surprising to see that 3.6 million of the 6.7 million not registered throughout California live in the big counties across the state: Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside San Bernardino, and San Diego.
Los Angeles is the title holder statewide with 1.2 million people eligible but not registered to vote, or 19% of the total statewide.
One locality that really surprised me with their high numbers of eligible but not registered to vote was San Francisco County. San Francisco has 625,000 registered voters but have 433,000 eligible to vote but who are unregistered. Those 433,000 potential votes are a lot of votes to take off the table in such a left leaning city. I have your typical ideas as to why this may be the case, but clearly this is not typical. Anyone from the Bay area have any insight into this? I'd love to hear your perspective.
In the meantime, if this bill becomes law, what will the impact on localities be? What per cent of the 6.7 million will actually decide to cast ballots in 2016? More importantly, how will they choose to cast their ballot - will they vote absentee or will they show up at their local precinct on election day? Localities will have to be able to plan ahead in order to staff polling locations with additional paid volunteers, or hire additional workers to process the potential crush of absentee ballot applications, as well as the ballots themselves. Fortunately, the increase in registering these eligible voters should be gradual so localities should have the time to be prepared for a wave of new voters.
I also think the passage of this bill has the potential to really swell margins for Democratic candidates running statewide. And passage of this bill could have a huge impact on the popular vote in the 2016 presidential race. However, Democratic candidates will have to pony up more money to get these new voters to cast ballots. Many won't cast ballots, but the potential payoff here for Democratic candidates is enormous.
And a big shout out to the legislature in the state of Oregon from whom this idea came from. A lot of other Democratic leaning states need to take a look at the Oregon law and consider passing similar type bills. But with the legislatures being controlled by the GOP in a number of those Democratic states, the impact will far less than it could be.
http://www.latimes.com/...
PLEASE NOTE: Left Coast Tom was kind enough to point out in a comment below that I misinterpreted the data from the California Secretary of State regarding San Francisco County. San Francisco County has 625,000 total eligible voters, of which 433,000 are registered, leaving 192,000 unregistered, not the 433,000, that I stated above. So approximately 30% of eligible voters in San Francisco County are not registered to vote.