How updating California’s ‘motor voter’ system can help expand the state’s electorate

Today, 1 in 6 eligible Californians is not registered to vote, and a disproportionate share are people of color. That’s not necessarily surprising when you consider how long California disenfranchised people of color, poorer residents and immigrant citizens. 

California legislators waited 92 years before ratifying the 15th Amendment, which granted Black people the right to vote, because they were worried what that would mean for Chinese, Mexican and Native Americans. California discouraged voting by withholding citizenship to Chinese immigrants, and introduced obstacles like literacy tests, poll taxes, and burdensome registration requirements.

Most of these roadblocks weren’t fully reformed until the 1970s. Despite federal motor voter laws and other state reforms, the legacy of these policies still persists in California.

State lawmakers can take action. Senate Bill 299, which soon faces a critical Assembly Appropriations Committee hearing, would strengthen our motor voter laws, allowing the California Secretary of State to adopt a program to pre-approve registration for eligible, unregistered people who interact with the DMV. For people who don’t select the registration option when getting a license but provide the DMV with clear proof of eligibility, the SOS would be able to create a “pre-approved for registration” list.

This provides a streamlined process to activate their registration, simplifying the pathway to political participation. 

SB 299 would also add critical protections for non-citizens to prevent erroneous registration and protect the integrity of our voting system. By filtering green-card holders and other non-citizens out of existing motor voter processes, the bill would reduce risks that non-citizens unintentionally attest to citizenship or register to vote.

This bill puts the onus on our government to determine eligibility, rather than the individual, an approach that’s won over immigrant rights organizations and civil rights heroine Dolores Huerta. These groups often field concerns about people in varying stages of their legalization journey who are afraid of making a mistake at the DMV, fearful that they could misidentify themselves and jeopardize their legalization process. By utilizing technological advancements, the DMV will be able to identify eligible unregistered voters and filter out those who aren’t.

The proposed legislation is modeled after secure automatic voter registration, or SAVR, which is  considered best-in-class by the 10 states who have made the upgrade. In Colorado, it doubled the number of people registering to vote at the DMV, with a particularly large impact for 16 and 17-year-olds eligible for pre-registration. Meanwhile, a 2021 study found that SAVR increased eligible voter turnout by an average of 3.3% – more than double the turnout effect of California’s current system. 

Notably, in the eight years since these updates were implemented elsewhere, there hasn’t been a single report of non-citizens unintentionally registering to vote through these systems, compared to numerous reports of non-citizens accidentally registering in states that haven’t updated the motor voter process. 

There’s too much at stake for lawmakers to delay action. Polling shows that the most frequent voters in California skew white, older and own homes. Everyone else is not adequately weighing in on the policies that affect them and policymakers who represent them. Think of all the crises facing California and how the responses could improve if more people participated in voting.

California has the opportunity to remove obstacles to civic participation that its people have inherited from decades of systemic discrimination and exclusionary practices. SB 299 is more than a policy proposal — it is a commitment to a more representative government and a more inclusive democracy for generations to come.