The study, conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, predicts that as voter registration increases, so will diversity in the electorate among underrepresented groups.

However, determining how much the electorate will grow largely depends on the rate with which eligible voters decline automatic registration at the DMV, according to the study. 

How it works

Under the new law, the DMV will transfer data on customers, who come in for a new license or a renewal, to the Secretary of State for automatic voter registration. However, the individual can decline to participate in the process. This process is estimated to start in July 2017.

As a benchmark, the study used statistics from Oregon, where 7 percent of eligible voters declined automatic enrollment under a similar law. 

About 7.4 million Californians are eligible to vote but remain unregistered. 

Increases diversity

The new law will increase the share of the electorate for underrepresented groups. Latinos would increase their share by 4 percent, up to almost 28 percent. Asian/Pacific Islanders would jump to 16.6 percent, an increase of 1.7 percent.

The gains made by Latinos and Asian/Pacific Islanders would have a diminishing effect on African American’s share of the electorate, as their share would decrease slightly to 7.3 percent — a loss of .2 percent.

The largest jump would be among Californians with no college education, who would increase their share of the electorate from 26.8 percent to 33.1 percent.

“In general, registering the unregistered population involves bringing a very different group of people into the electorate: one that is younger, more diverse, more mobile, poorer, and less educated,” writes the study’s authors Eric McGhee, a research fellow at PPIC and Mindy Romero, founder and director of the California Civic Engagement Project at the UC Davis Center for Regional Change.

Will it lead to turnout?

Despite the new law increasing the share of the electorate among underrepresented groups, gaps will persist. For example, voters with two foreign-born parents currently experience a 15-percentage-point gap between their share of the adult population and their share of the electorate. The new law would shrink that gap to below 11 points.

The study’s authors concede that it’s difficult to determine exactly how large the new electorate will be, with the rate of declining to register as the largest variable. And the larger registration rates will not necessarily boost voter turnout, which has been decreasing for decades, but was particularly low in the 2012 primary.

“Even if (the new system) does significantly boost registration, it does not solve the problem of low turnout; it simply removes one barrier to participation,” wrote McGhee and Romero. “Many of the new registrants will be coming from disadvantaged communities and will be disengaged from politics, never having been contacted by any candidate or campaign.”

Senate Bill 113 is by state Sen. Hanna-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara. It would pre-register high school students to vote at age 16. Introducing her bill in the Senate Tuesday, she said there are similar laws in Florida and Hawaii.

She said pre-registration encourages young people to vote once they are eligible at age 18; and makes it more likely they will become lifelong voters.

“It does not change the voter age,” Jackson said Tuesday in the Senate. “Once they turn 18, the registration is automatic. This is great for Democracy to invest in the system. It’s their future.”

Sen. Joel Anderson, R-La Mesa, said the legislation would likely create a giant paper trail for the Secretary of State and local elections officials who would have to track the registration records. Anderson also warned that, if the teens move and don’t realize they must re-register, they won’t be able to vote.

Vote by mail at college

SB240 is by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. It would establish at least one vote-by-mail ballot drop box within each campus of all state universities and colleges.

Yet the vast majority of public universities in California have actual polling places on campus on Election Day, according to the bill analysis.

Yee said:

“Senate Bill 240 ensures that young voters’ voices are heard at the ballot box by allowing University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) students to drop off their vote by mail ballots on campus. While in college, many students will be voting for the first time. Together with online voter registration, students can effortlessly register or reregister to vote with their new address, request a vote by mail ballot, and drop off the completed ballot on campus.”

Out-of-county student voter disenfranchisement

Many students attending college away from home are typically registered to vote in their home county, not the university’s county. And each county’s registrar of voters is not required to forward vote-by-mail ballots to the student’s county of origin, so these student voters could be disenfranchised, according to the bill’s analysis.

The bill analysis explained how easy it already is for the budding scholars to vote:

“While in college, many students will be voting for the first time. Together with online voter registration, students can effortlessly register to vote, and on Election Day have convenient and easy access to a polling place on their university or college campus.”

Previous attempts

ACA 7 is by Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco. In the bill summary’s words:

“Allows a person who is 17 years old and who will be 18 years old at the time of the next general election to register and vote in that general election and in any intervening primary or special election that occurs after the person registers to vote.”

This new bill is similar to ACA 17 in 2005 by former Assemblyman Gene Mullin, D-South San Francisco, the father of Kevin Mullin. It sought to lower the voting age to 17, but only for young people who would be 18 before the next general election.

The goal was to allow them to vote in the primary for that general election. Several attempts to pass the constitutional amendment failed, falling short of the two-thirds vote needed to put the change on the ballot.

Automatic voter registration

As I explained in Part 1 of this series, one of the biggest features of Covered California, the state’s new health benefit exchange, is how it was set up. Established to implement the federal Affordable Care Act, usually called Obamacare, the state program covers health care.

But it also uses activist organizations connected to the Democratic Party to register people to vote. The funding also will boost the budgets of these organizations.

In addition, the newly created Obamacare health exchange “Assisters” will be trained to sign people up for social services, including welfare, food stamps and housing assistance, according to Community Health Councils, Inc.

In 2012, the California Legislature passed Senate Bill 35, by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima. It required that voter registration be part of the health insurance exchange.

SB35 creates “voter registration agencies” largely through state social services agencies. The law requires anyone applying online for service or assistance, or submitting a recertification, renewal or change of address form, to be provided an online “voter preference form.”

Effective January 1, the California Department of Social Services issued a new All County Information Notice to county welfare directors and state and local National Voter Registration Act agencies regarding compliance with SB35.

CalFresh, California Work Opportunity and the Responsibility to Kids (formerly CALWORKs) programs are now required to provide welfare and food stamp recipients a voter registration card, “regardless of whether they indicate they want to register of not,” according to the Department of Social Services. “Under federal law, the NVRA requires states to provide voter registration opportunities at all offices that provide public assistance and all offices that provide state-funded programs primarily engaged in providing services to person(s) with disabilities. All applicants and continuing clients must be given a voter registration card (VRC) and an NVRA Voter Preference Form, regardless of whether they indicate they want to register or not.”

The agencies are required to “Provide and collect a voter registration card, and
 provide and collect a NVRA Voter Preference Form.”

Covered CA originally exempted from open record keeping

A state law passed in 2010 granted Covered California broad exemptions from the California Public Records Act. This would have limited the public’s right to access information about the contracts issued by Covered California, and the rates of payment to companies and individuals.

Five Republican U.S. senators sent a letter in June to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius demanding a federal investigation into California’s exchange policies on concealing information. “We see no reason why a state that has been awarded nearly $910 million in federal taxpayer dollars should not disclose how that money is being spent once a contract is finalized,” the senators wrote.

After the letter, the state Legislature made an about face and passed new legislation, SB332. State Sens. Bill Emmerson, R-Redlands, and Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, co-authored SB332, to ensure that Covered California is subject to the Public Records Act. “This bill requires that non-health plan contracts entered into with the exchange — such as those for consulting, marketing, and other professional services — as well as the payments for those contracts be accessible to the public immediately, just as they would be with any other state agency,” explained think tank California Healthline in a recent op ed.

It was signed into law on Sept. 11 by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Immediate issues with Obamacare implementation

According to Craig Gottwals, health insurance expert and attorney, there will be several immediate issues with Obamacare implementation in California:

1. There will be technical and computer glitches everywhere in the new system.
2. There will be rationing. With millions of newly insured in the market, companies like Blue Cross said they plan to be using roughly only half of their network for the health exchange. This is bound to cause  shortages, which will also impact those not insured on the health care exchange.
3. Subsidies will be abused. Even the super rich in California will be able to get health care subsidies because the subsidies are solely based on income, and not net worth. Assets don’t matter. Someone with a $100 million stock portfolio might earn just $60,000 in salary and so be eligible for the subsidies.
4. Because there are four different subsidies within the $20,000 to $90,000 income range, lower-income employees will tell employers to hold off on raises if it throws them into a different subsidy bracket with lower payouts.

By Dave Roberts

Seventy-two percent of Californians who are eligible to vote are registered to vote. That’s up 2 percentage points from four years ago, but down from the three-quarters of eligible Californians who were registered in 1996. That 72 percent might remain a high water mark for decades if an undemocratic Democratic bill that slipped through the Legislature last week is signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

AB 145 by Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, bans the practice of paying people for each voter that they register (or re-register to another party). Pan believes this will reduce the incentive for registration fraud.

“Sacramento County Registrar Jill LaVine stated 25 percent of the 31,000 cards submitted by Momentum Political Services had been rejected for inaccuracies,” said Pan on the Assembly floor on Aug. 30. “Ms. LaVine has also reported that her office has also found numerous examples of voters having their political party affiliations switched against their wishes.”

Reducing voter registration fraud not only restores integrity to the voter registration process, he said, but it also reduces staff time for county registrars in investigating and invalidating fraudulent affidavits. “Decreasing this backlog and strain on county registrars can save significant resources when county governments are struggling in a difficult budget climate,” Pan said.

The switched party affiliations in Sacramento County were “voters having their political party affiliation switched to ‘Republican’ against their wishes,” stated Pan in his written support for the bill.

GOP criticism

But several Assembly Republicans criticized the bill, one of them calling it an attack on Republican registration.

“This is just a bad idea,” said Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks. “This is going to make it harder to register people to vote. Yet I hear on this floor all the time … that we want to expand access to vote, we want to improve voter participation. But when it happens to help the Republican side of the aisle because it’s free market, let’s shut it down. This is a bill in search of a problem.”

Donnelly also criticized the bill for having bypassed the committee review process. AB 145 started out dealing with high-speed rail before being gutted and amended.

“So the very people who claim that they want more participation, [in effect are saying,] ‘We want to hear from the people, we want you to weigh in, we want you to be part of the process — but we’re not going to abide by any of the rules, we’re not going to actually give you three-day notice. We’re just going to cram this through at the last second,’” said Donnelly. “It is just fundamentally wrong. It is a stupid idea. Why are we pushing so many stupid ideas into legislation?”

Brian Jones, R-Santee, pointed out that last year Brown vetoed a similar bill, SB 205, issuing the following veto message: “I understand the author’s desire to stop fraudulent voter registration. But I don’t believe this bill — which makes it a crime to pay people for registering voters based on the number of registrations they secure — will help. Voting is at the heart of our democracy. Efforts to register voters should be encouraged, not criminalized.”

Jones added, “I ask the governor to put the same exact message on the veto message for this bill as well.”

Chris Norby, R-Fullerton, voted against AB 145, but said he is sympathetic to the intent of the bill.

“I think that paying people to re-register people by party is a waste of money for either party,” he said. “If you have somebody who says, ‘Look, I can increase your registration edge for Democrats or Republicans by 2 percent if you give me all this money.’ And a guy goes out and re-registers these people, in some cases fraudulently, some cases he may say, ‘Re-register with me and I’ll make 10 bucks, do it because you’re sympathetic with me, and then you can always re-register back to your original party in another month.’ And that guy can make 10 bucks. It’s a waste of a candidates’ money, and it’s a waste of the party’s money.”

It’s likely that AB 145 also will be a waste of the Assembly’s time when this Son of SB 205 faces a Brown veto.