California DMV botches 23,000 voter registrations

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

last updated 6 September 2018

Officials from California's Department of Motor Vehicles announced on Wednesday that between April and August, tens of thousands of residents were incorrectly registered to vote.

In late April, California launched its new "motor voter" system, which registers any U.S. citizens to vote when they either apply for or renew their license at the DMV. About a month ago, it was discovered that when DMV employees did not clear their computer screens between appointments, information from the previous appointment was combined with the later appointment, and that error-filled registration form was sent to state election officials who used the faulty information to update the voter registration database, the Los Angeles Times reports.

In a letter to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, Jean Shiomoto, California's DMV director, and Amy Tong, director of the California Department of Technology, called this an "administrative processing error." About 1.4 million voter registration files were sent in between late April and early August, and during a monthlong investigation that compared correct DMV records against what was sent to election officials, 23,000 errors were discovered. An estimated 1,300 people were registered to vote even though they were not supposed to be, and an unknown number of people had their political party preference changed without their consent, the Times reports. Only U.S. citizens were affected, and they will receive notification in the mail. Padilla said he was "extremely disappointed and deeply frustrated" by the errors.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.