Gov. Gavin Newsom and fellow Democratic lawmakers have expressed no contrition for their failed attempt to force President Donald Trump to release five years of tax returns to gain access to the California ballot in the 2020 general election.

The California Supreme Court recently ruled unanimously that Senate Bill 27, signed by Newsom in July, violated the state Constitution. The opinion by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye at times had an incredulous tone, noting that advocates appeared unaware of SB27’s obvious conflict with Proposition 4. That’s a 1972 amendment to the California Constitution easily passed by state voters that requires presidential primaries must be open to all “recognized” candidates.

Further reflecting the state high court’s view that the law was frivolous, the unanimous verdict was delivered just 15 days after justices heard testimony in the case. Court watchers said that was highly unusual.

A federal judge had already ruled the law violated the U.S. Constitution in September. That decision was appealed by Secretary of State Alex Padilla, but the appeal was dropped after the state Supreme Court’s ruling.

Nevertheless, a spokesman for Newsom continued to depict the now-void law as well-intentioned.

Jesse Melgar told the San Francisco Chronicle that the governor “would continue to urge all candidates to voluntarily release their tax returns. … Congress and other states can and should take action to require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns.”

Padilla issued a statement expressing disappointment with the state high court’s decision but also declaring “the movement for greater transparency will endure. The history of our democracy is on the side of more transparency, not less.”

‘Ridiculous’ bill said to reflect ‘arrogance and hypocrisy’

Defenses of the law were scoffed at by opinion writers.

The Sacramento Bee editorial board – which had ripped SB27 as “silly and destructive” when Newsom signed it into law – wrote that the measure  “was so ridiculous and flawed that even California’s justices could barely conceal their disdain.” 

The Southern California Newspaper Group’s editorial noted that the state high court “quoted former Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto of a similar bill in 2017: ‘Today we require tax returns, but what would be next? Five years of health records? A certified birth certificate? High school report cards?’

“Democratic lawmakers and a new governor refused to learn from that message. They tried again and embarrassed themselves. They richly deserved the court’s smackdown.”

The Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote that the tax-returns law “accomplished only one thing: giving Trump more ammunition against the state he loves to mock.”

Times columnist George Skelton was the harshest critic of all, noting that many of the Democrats who claimed the moral high ground in backing the tax-returns requirement were not transparent about their own finances.

“This is not about whether Trump should release his federal tax returns,” he wrote. “Rather, it’s about Democrats enacting a blatantly unconstitutional law with a straight face for purely political reasons. It’s about arrogance and hypocrisy.”

Part of SB27 that was reportedly included at Newsom’s behest remains intact. It’s the requirement that gubernatorial candidates provide five years of tax returns to qualify for the ballot beginning with the 2022 election.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. It passed in Senate on a 29-10 vote and in the Assembly on a 57-17 vote in early July.

The initiative received around 600,000 signatures — almost double the amount needed to qualify for the November 6th ballot.

“Three Californias” is backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Tim Draper and would divide the Golden State up into California, Northern California, and Southern California.

“Californians deserve a more effective education system that isn’t failing our families, more reliable infrastructure that isn’t fracturing our communities, and more sensible taxes that aren’t stifling our opportunities,” the Cal 3 campaign site reads.

Northern California would go from the San Jose area and extend to the Oregon border. Southern California would start in Fresno and cover most of Southern California, including the Inland empire and San Diego, and California would include Los Angeles County and extend up the coast to Monterey County.

“No one can argue that California’s government is doing a good job governing or educating or building infrastructure for its people,” Draper told The New York Times last year. “And it doesn’t matter which party is in place.”

While the group faces heavy hurdles in actually swaying voters, as a recent SurveyUSA poll shows voters are overwhelmingly opposed to the move, if it passed, the change could have a sizable effect on the national election map, and perhaps be a boost to the GOP in the electoral college.

For example the potential “Southern California” includes Fresno, Tulare, Madera and Kern counties, all of which voted for President Trump in 2016. Additionally, the historically conservative Orange County is in that theoretical state.

But it would also likely result in four more Democratic senators from California and Northern California.

Even if voters were persuaded to backing it, the intuitive would still need the approval of the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress.

The plan still comes with numerous question marks — like the transactional costs of actually breaking up the state with respect to how university systems, public works projects, and other governmental services would be divided and structured during a transition into three separate states.

“California government can do a better job addressing the real issues facing the state, but this measure is a massive distraction that will cause political chaos and greater inequality,” tweeted Steve Maviglio, a consultant for the opposition effort NoCABreakup. “Splitting California into three new states will triple the amount of special interests, lobbyists, politicians and bureaucracy.”

But supporters cite those same issues as reasons for breaking up the state in the first place, arguing that California has become too big to succeed.

“The California state government isn’t too big to fail, because it is already failing its citizens in so many crucial ways,” Peggy Grande, a spokesperson for Citizens for Cal 3 campaign, said in a statement. “The reality is that for an overmatched, overstretched, and overwrought state-government structure, it is too big to succeed. Californians deserve a better future.”

Denise Cross / flickr

In an effort to bolster its relevance during the next presidential election, Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a new law moving California’s primary from June to early March.

A March primary gives the Golden State an opportunity to be political flashpoint moving into 2020. In 2016, by the time June rolled around, the presidential primaries were essentially over.

“Candidates will not be able to ignore the largest, most diverse state in the nation as they seek our country’s highest office,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said. “California has been a leader time and time again on the most important issues facing our country – including immigration, education and the environment. The Prime Time Primary Act will help ensure that issues important to Californians are prioritized by presidential candidates from all political parties.”

The move is also seen as a potential boost to possible Democratic candidates like Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, rising stars in the party who would benefit from having their home state vote earlier in the primary process.

The legislation also moves up congressional races, taking effect in 2019. Now, the elections will fall “on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March,” making California part of the so-called “Super Tuesday” states.

Furthermore, an earlier primary will have a significant effect on fundraising, beyond candidates raising money earlier.

“With an earlier primary, our elections could have major national implications in the electoral college and down ballot races,” Los Angeles-based GOP fundraiser Charles Moran told CalWatchdog. “D.C. will have to pay attention to us for more than just our money.”

This isn’t a first for California, as there was a February primary back in 2008, leading to the “highest voter turnout for a primary election since 1980,” according to Padilla.

Joining the “Super Tuesday” fray also appears to be an effort to thwart President Trump, or least give California a greater opportunity to set the anti-Trump agenda for Democrats nationally.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, who authored the bill, hinted at that motivation, saying that “we have a responsibility to drive a different agenda at the national level and promote inclusion and consensus not the politics of division.”

California has positioned itself at the center of the so-called “resistance” against the Trump administration, suing over the travel ban, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the border wall.

Who will Californians believe: Secretary of State Alex Padilla or the National Security Agency?

That’s one way to boil down a flap that’s emerged this week over the sanctity of California’s 2016 elections.

Beginning shortly after November’s election, Padilla has pushed back hard at any claims of voting irregularities in the nation’s largest state. The former Democratic state senator representing part of Los Angeles – elected in 2014 to be the state’s chief elections officer – was most irked with President-elect Donald Trump’s claims that he would have won the popular vote if not for massive voter fraud in California and other states. On Jan. 25, soon after taking office, Trump repeated his claims and again specifically alleged problems in California.

Padilla called that a “flat-out lie.” He said his office reached out to Trump aides asking them to provide evidence for his claims and never heard back. In a press release issued then, Padilla said Trump’s leveling of harsh allegations without having a case is “frankly dangerous to people’s faith in our democratic system.”

In May, after Trump aides announced the creation of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Padilla again responded with outrage.

“The commission’s mandate is deeply flawed and its motives suspect,” the secretary of state said in a statement. “The only purpose this commission serves is to distract from critical investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. And I fear that it will serve as pretext for the administration’s efforts to roll back the voting rights so many fought so hard to obtain.”

But Padilla has also flatly rejected the idea that Russian operatives or operatives from any nation “hacked” any of the state’s election systems.

Bloomberg News: California election contractor was infiltrated

Yet early Tuesday, citing a classified NSA report obtained and released by The Intercept, Bloomberg News reported that “Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.”

U.S. intelligence agencies investigating a hack targeting Illinois election operations found telltale evidence that enabled them to uncover similar attempts to infiltrate voting systems elsewhere.

“Thirty-seven states reported finding traces of the hackers in various systems, according to one of the people familiar with the probe,” Bloomberg reported. “In two others – Florida and California – those traces were found in systems run by a private contractor managing critical election systems.” In Florida, Bloomberg wrote, another leak had established the contractor was VR Systems.

In response, Padilla’s office issued a statement that suggested the NSA report was based on outdated information.

“There is no evidence of any breach of elections systems in California. VR Systems, which is headquartered in Florida, does not provide services to the secretary of state,” Padilla said. His statement asserted that while VR Systems once provided some election services to Humboldt County, it was not involved in tabulating votes in California in 2016.

Separately, KPCC – the Pasadena-Los Angeles National Public Radio affiliate – reported that it had contacted election officials in the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside and Ventura, and all denied knowledge of having been hacked.

Meanwhile, there’s been little news on what Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity has done to investigate the president’s claims. The order creating the commission contained no timetable for it to issue interim findings or a full report.

Voter fraud in CA?

Good morning! Legislators are back in Sacramento today for the swearing in of their new colleagues. But at the same time, top Republicans are questioning the integrity of some of the state’s election results, forcing the state’s top election official to dismiss the allegations.

Leaders in the state party are concerned about local elections, particularly in one important Orange County state Senate race.

But President-elect Donald Trump fanned the flames by tweeting California was one of three states with “serious” voter fraud. His Sunday tweet followed another sent hours earlier claiming that he’d “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” 

So far, Trump has offered no proof to his claims, which were dismissed in great detail by PolitiFact California. Secretary of State Alex Padilla immediately sent a press release disavowing the claim: “It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him. His unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd.”

California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte told party officials in an internal email obtained by CalWatchdog that the state has a history of “anomalies” that “deserve further scrutiny.” Brulte added that he believed “most of the government officials charged with ensuring voter and ballot integrity are good people who want to do the right thing.”

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “A day after halting plans for a strike, state government’s largest employee union announced that it had reached a tentative agreement for a new contract. Neither SEIU Local 1000 nor the state’s Human Resources Department would disclose the deal’s highlights Saturday morning.” The Sacramento Bee has more. 

• “Bay Area elected officials are calling on Rep. Xavier Becerra, named by Gov. Jerry Brown to be the state’s attorney general, to prioritize a criminal investigation into the California Public Utilities Commission,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. 

• “With President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric on illegal immigration still fresh on their minds, legislative Democrats have readied a pair of proposals they believe will offer some immigrants additional legal help. The bills, set to be introduced on the first day of the new legislative session Monday, primarily aim to bolster the legal representation of immigrants who are in the country illegally and threatened with deportation.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

• “Ahead of next month’s inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, more than two dozen returning and new Democratic members of the California Senate on Friday asked President Obama to enact a ban on new oil drilling off the state’s coast.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

Legislature:

• New legislators will be sworn in today at the Capitol at noon. 

Gov. Brown:

• Hosting the 85th Annual Capitol Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony today at 4:30 p.m. on the west steps of the Capitol.
• Press conference with Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles, at 11:15 a.m. in the governor’s office in Sacramento. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @mwstafford

Leaders in the state party are concerned about local elections, particularly in one important Orange County state Senate race.

But President-elect Donald Trump fanned the flames by tweeting California was one of three states with “serious” voter fraud. His Sunday tweet followed another sent hours earlier claiming that he’d “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” 

Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2016

So far, Trump has offered no proof to his claims, which were dismissed in great detail by PolitiFact California. Secretary of State Alex Padilla immediately sent a press release disavowing the claim: “It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him. His unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd.”

SD29

California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte told party officials in an internal email obtained by CalWatchdog that the state has a history of “anomalies” that “deserve further scrutiny.” Brulte added that he believed “most of the government officials charged with ensuring voter and ballot integrity are good people who want to do the right thing.”

Brulte cited several incidents throughout the years, but came back to a recent election in Orange County — which ultimately gave Democrats a legislative supermajority — where voter turnout “increased in some cases up to 30 percent over the 2012 election.”

The Orange County Registrar of Voters attributed the spike in turnout percentage to a cleanup of the voter roll. 

Orange County’s history

California Republicans point back to a 1996 congressional race in Orange County, were 624 non-citizens voted after having registered illegally, according to a congressional investigation. In that race, the Democratic challenger, Loretta Sanchez, defeated the Republican incumbent, Bob Dornan, by less than 1,000 votes.

“That was before online registration, late registration, a boom in illegal residency, driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, and other trends,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, a member of the Republican National Committee from California. “Logically, the numbers are much higher today and the state seems deliberately to make it difficult to verify eligibility to vote and also takes little to no interest in preventing fraudulent voting.”

Ways to improve?

Dhillon said Republicans are concerned that the current online voter registration system doesn’t track the computer’s ISP address, which helps detect fraud, and that users can self-verify citizenship with a driver license number, which are issued to non-citizens.

Dhillon said Republicans believe new voters should verify citizenship, not just check off a box. 

Nothing to see here

But the Secretary of State’s office holds that there’s no problem. A spokesman told CalWatchdog that the SOS “already conducts routine security assessments of our systems,” but declined to give specifics.

Many election law experts say there is no evidence of widespread problem voter fraud. Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, said Trump’s claims did not happen and “lack any evidence or grounding in reality.” 

An investigation into what happened in Orange County may be worthwhile, Levinson said, but added that increased turnout itself isn’t enough to allege voter fraud.

“There are plenty of reasons this election cycle as to why people in Orange County would be motivated to go to the polls.” 

If Donald Trump aims to significantly reduce the presence of undocumented and unlawful immigrants in California, he will face staunch opposition. From the municipal to statewide level, officials have come out strongly against the prospect of stronger enforcement and deportation. 

“Secretary of State Alex Padilla criticized the choice of Kris Kobach [as one of Trump’s new immigration transition team members], who holds the same position in Kansas as Padilla, as counter to Trump’s call for unity,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Kobach advised the incoming president on immigration issues during the campaign, and helped draft the Arizona legislation that required immigration status checks during traffic stops.”

Excoriating Kobach for a “pattern of supporting racist, anti-immigrant policies including voter suppression and racial profiling laws,” Padilla warned in a written statement that Trump’s choice “sends a deeply troubling message that telegraphs an imminent assault on our collective voting rights and civil rights,” the paper added. 

Trump’s push to intensify the deportation regimen pursued by President Obama has sent California activists into crisis mode, inspiring an ironic call among some for the undocumented to edge back into the metaphorical shadows to avoid exposing themselves to increased federal scrutiny. One such potential pitfall is the so-called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, designed to help exempt young children from facing penalties older unlawful entrants have often faced.

Resistance strategies 

DACA “has allowed 750,000 young people who came to the U.S. illegally to continue working and studying in this country,” the San Jose Mercury News recalled. “Immigration activists from the Central Coast believe, because DACA was an executive action, it would be an easy immigration program for Trump to end.”

“In light of the demand, several community organizations held a news conference in Salinas Monday to urge calm among immigrant communities and to announce a series of forums in the next few days to answer questions, assuage concerns and urge people to be ready for what’s to come ­– whatever that is.”

Amid likely tectonic shifts in the policy landscape, California police have not necessarily lined up behind stiffer enforcement measures. Officials in so-called sanctuary cities have warned that a concerted federal push to purge their neighborhoods of undocumented residents would be met with resistance. “Democratic mayors of major U.S. cities that have long had cool relationships with federal immigration officials say they will do all they can to protect residents from deportation, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s vows to withhold potentially millions of dollars in taxpayer money if they do not cooperate,” the Associated Press reported. 

Letter of the law

But some law enforcement agencies have staked out a cautious position based on the idea that their jurisdiction and responsibilities are simply limited. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, for instance, avowed that “I don’t intend on doing anything different,” as the Orange County Register noted. “We are not going to engage in law enforcement activities solely based on somebody’s immigration status. We are not going to work in conjunction with Homeland Security on deportation efforts. That is not our job, nor will I make it our job.”

In fact, Beck and chiefs like him have the law on their side. “Because states and cities can’t be required to enforce federal law — and there’s no U.S. requirement that police ask about a person’s immigration status — it’s likely that any Trump effort to crack down on sanctuary cities would focus on those that refuse to comply with ICE requests,” the AP added, citing Roy Beck, CEO of NumbersUSA.

On the political side, Senator-elect Kamala Harris made a point to establish herself as one of Trump’s most powerful opponents on immigration. For her first public appearance after the election, she chose an L.A. activist group’s headquarters. “Harris has followed the appearance up with a post on the website Medium saying she wanted ‘every immigrant family in this country  —  as well as the new Trump administration – to know exactly where I stood on immigration reform,'” according to McClatchy. “Harris has an online petition to support immigrants and suggested California would lead the resistance to Trump.”

Though small, California’s mainstream conservative establishment has a degree of power that appears to be unusual this election cycle, coalescing around Ted Cruz’s insurgent conservative campaign instead of Marco Rubio’s more traditional effort. Ron Nehring, Cruz’s California chairman who previously served as the state GOP chair and ran for Lt. Governor in 2014, touted the California Republican Assembly’s overwhelming first ballot vote in favor of Ted Cruz, noting that Ronald Reagan called the CRA the “conscience” of the party.

The Trump factor

But Donald Trump has reason to be confident that he will come out on top in California. “Earlier in the season, polls already showed him doing well,” as Fox and Hounds recalled. “A January Field survey showed him running about even with Ted Cruz, and he has surely gained strength since then. Cruz is pitching his appeal to evangelical voters, who are much scarcer in California than in the South. As the Nevada entrance polls confirm, Trump has a broader base, and he is attractive to voters who worry about illegal immigration. California Republican voters are especially passionate about that issue.”

And California recently handed Trump one of his first endorsements from a sitting member of Congress — Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter. “We don’t need a policy wonk as president. We need a leader as president,” Hunter told Politico, joking that Trump’s indifference toward shows of support from current officeholders made him more inclined to announce his own backing. Hunter, Politico added, “sponsored legislation last year that became known by its opponents as the Donald Trump Act, which would have forced local law enforcement in sanctuary cities to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they had an undocumented immigrant in custody.”

Losing voters

New figures on party affiliation offered another unnerving sign for California Republicans turned off by Trump. A new report released by Secretary of State Alex Padilla “finds that 24 percent of California voters now officially have ‘no party preference,’ the term used by elections officials to describe independents,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “That’s up almost three percentage points since the last presidential election in 2012.” Eric McGhee, elections researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, told the Times that the GOP has been losing significant numbers of voters to the bloc declining to state a preference. “The Democratic share of registrants has been flat, the independent share has been climbing fast, and the Republican share has been sinking just as fast,” he said.

“In the January 2008 report, almost one in five California voters were unaffiliated with a political party. In the last open presidential election, 2004, only 16 percent of voters were counted in the category of independent. Republicans have suffered the greatest blow from the shifting allegiances of California voters. No statewide GOP candidate has been elected since 2006, and the party’s share of the electorate since then has plummeted by 7 percentage points.”

A March surprise?

The trend has led some observers to game out implausible but potentially effective strategies for tearing delegate-rich California from Trump’s hands. On NBC’s Today Show, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd raised the prospect of a surprise entrant anti-Trump voters could rally behind. “If Trump is blowing through March and then the panic really sets in, […] it’s all a simply denying him a majority of delegates, doing whatever it takes,” Todd said. “There is still a filing deadline to make in the California primary. Maybe a Mitt Romney” would jump in, he ventured.

“This is a scenario someone outlined to me a couple days ago. Mitt Romney would file late, you may get favorite sons and daughters to file late, simply to try to beat Trump, deny him delegates and create another way for a brokered convention. I have to tell you, it’s the most farfetched.”

Romney recently made waves on Twitter by going public with concern that Trump’s tax returns might show him to be boastful or misleading about his actual net worth.

This opens a new front in Silicon Valley’s push for a much bigger tech emphasis in California’s public schools. The Golden State is one of the 25 states that don’t require passing a computer science class to get a high school degree, resisting a national trend.

Sunday’s San Jose Mercury-News has details:

It’s the backbone of Silicon Valley’s world-changing tech industry, but — like journalism and geography — computer science is considered just another high school elective by the University of California.

 

Now, a powerful coalition of technology leaders, state politicians and high school teachers has taken aim at the university’s influential set of high school courses required for admission, pressuring UC to count computer science as advanced math, alongside calculus and statistics.

 

They say elevating computer science would encourage more California high schools to offer it — and more students to sign up … .

 

“My kids learn how the Internet works from the ground up; they learn how to program. It’s mathematical thinking,” said Karen Hardy, a computer science teacher at Wilcox High in Santa Clara.

 

Like many others, Hardy believes UC’s stance is holding back California schools. “I feel like we’re in the Dark Ages,” she said.

Gender, racial disparities cited in who takes classes

The Los Angeles Times’ coverage of Newsom’s letter emphasized …

… concern about the gender and racial gap of those taking courses and pursuing computer science as a profession.

 

According to data cited in the letter, fewer than 9,000 California high school students took the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam in 2015. Of those students, only about 2,300 were girls, less than 1,000 were Latinos and about 150 were black.

 

According to state data, meanwhile, salaries for computing jobs are high — averaging an annual $105,622 — but the number of graduates in the field are not expected to meet workforce demands.

But it’s not just schools in poor communities or rural areas that aren’t providing access to computer science. According to Re/Code, fewer than 5 percent of high school students in San Francisco took computer science in the 2014-15 school year, with a lack of classes seen as why.

Here’s a partial list of the executives who co-signed the letter with Newsom: Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman, Sequoia Capital Chairman Michael Moritz, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!.

Other signatories included California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, superintendent-president of Long Beach City College, and Republican Assembly Leader Kristin Olsen.

Newsom is a member of the UC Board of Regents as part of his duties as lieutenant governor.

Denise Cross / flickr

Secretary of State Alex Padilla has succeeded in his quest to automatically register Californians to vote.

Partisan privileges

The bill he sponsored, passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, touched off a fresh round of controversy over the wisdom and benefits of the approach to increasing turnout, which in California has sunken to historic lows. Last year, the state’s midterm elections mustered a 42 percent turnout, as NPR observed.

Recent polling by the Public Policy Institute of California indicated that, while two thirds of respondents supported the legislation, “49 percent lean toward the Democratic Party and 22 percent toward the Republican Party; 29 percent lean toward neither party or are unsure.” The imbalance has led many Republicans to express frustration that Democrats were supporting automatic registration for their own benefit. Slightly complicating the picture, however, the PPIC poll also indicated an ideological tilt to the right among unregistered adults: “37 percent are conservative, 31 percent are liberal, and 31 percent are moderate.”

Easing the vote

Proponents of the law argued that its mechanics were straightforward and efficient. “Eligible citizens are registered to vote when they show up at a Department of Motor Vehicles office to obtain a driver’s license or state ID,” as the Huffington Post explained. “The DMV gives the eligible voter a chance to opt out if they prefer not to register. If the person does not opt out, the DMV electronically transfers their voter registration information to the Secretary of State’s office, rather than making election officials enter data by hand from paper registration forms.”

“Citizens should not be required to opt-in to their fundamental right to vote,” Padilla said in a statement. “We do not have to opt-in to other rights, such as free speech or due process. The right to vote should be no different.” Voters, NPR noted, “retain the right to opt out, cancel or change party affiliation at any time,” adding that Padilla’s office pegged the number of eligible but unregistered potential California voters at 6.6 million.

Brown signed the bill in conjunction with a suite of others, including “a bill permitting county elections officials to offer conditional registration and provisional voting at satellite locations during the 14 days immediately preceding election day,” another that will install secure ballot drop boxes “at shopping malls, libraries and other spots,” and one billing the cost of election recounts to the state, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Rights and risks

Together, the new laws were intended, the governor’s office said, “to help improve elections and expand voter rights and access in California.”

But critics said the law wouldn’t properly distinguish between citizens and noncitizens during the registration process — a point of contention amid the ongoing debate over efforts to reduce the legal consequences of unlawful entry into the state. Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, warned that state databases “lack the necessary safeguards to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls,” according to The Washington Times. True the Vote spokesman Logan Churchwell went further, the Times added, asserting that California officials “specifically chose not to make noncitizen license holders searchable in their DMV database.”

On Fox News, Judge Andrew Napolitano, a libertarian commentator, raised the specter of mass voting by noncitizens. “So if you are an illegal alien in California, get a driver’s license, register to vote, you can vote in local, state and federal elections in California and those votes count,” he said.

But other libertarians have claimed that the changes would heighten virtually the opposite sort of risk. The American Civil Liberties Union joined Republican lawmakers in opposing the bill. “Since California’s DMV now issues driver’s licenses to immigrants who are living in the country illegally, the group fears those drivers will be registered to vote mistakenly, risking their ability to stay in the country,” reported the San Jose Mercury News. “State and federal laws strictly forbid illegal immigrants from voting.”

The bill, passed as Assembly Bill 1461 and authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, will take effect this coming January.