Many issues remain to be resolved with respect to voter registration and
processing in the upcoming election. This letter expresses our concerns in
hopes of resolving these issues to ensure an election in which all eligible
voters can vote.
March 28, 2006
The Honorable Bruce McPherson
Secretary of State of California
1500 11th Street
Sacramento, California 95814
Dear Secretary McPherson:
The League of Women Voters of California is concerned that under new
state procedures for adding registered voters to the CalVoter state
database, it appears that a large number of registrations are being
inappropriately rejected.
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 requires each state to implement,
by January 1, 2006, “a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive
computerized statewide voter registration list.” Recognizing that the
state of California would not have such a database in place by that
deadline, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the California Secretary
of State entered into a memorandum of agreement to update and use the
existing CalVoter registration system for HAVA compliance. Emergency
regulations were adopted by the Secretary of State to implement that
memorandum.
Judging from statistics compiled since the first of this year for Los
Angeles County, most of the rejected registrations and re-registrations
fall into one of two categories. One type of problem occurs when individuals
provide a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social
Security number (SSN) on their registration form, but their name or
birth date is not exactly the same as in the DMV records. Another type
of problem occurs when individuals do not provide a driver’s license
number or the last four digits of their SSN on the registration form
although their other information can be matched with DMV or other state
agency records.
Since many registrations are in fact re-registrations prompted by a
voter’s change of address, party, etc., many of these individuals have
already been on the voter registration rolls in California. However,
in both types of situation, the current system does not allow any of
those individuals to be included in the statewide registration list.
We must object. Our procedures should guard against inappropriate
elimination of legitimate voters from the system. It is not enough to
allow them to cast a provisional ballot if they make it to the polls.
Being excluded from the registration list means that they will not receive
a sample ballot or a ballot pamphlet, they will not receive notice of
the location of their polling places, and they will not be permitted
to request an absentee ballot.
We hope that a resolution to this problem can be reached quickly.
We urge you to find alternatives to the current rules (data standards
and match criteria) for processing registrations. If possible, that
would be done by administrative procedures available to you. However,
if it proves that legislation is needed, the LWVC would support that
approach.
Under HAVA, it is intended that information provided by other databases,
such as DMV data, will supplement the information provided by
voters when they register or re-register, thereby helping to correct
an application so it can be processed and accepted, if the applicant
is eligible, instead of rejected.
It is a well-known problem that mistakes are made in database administration
and management. Applicants transpose or forget numbers and letters,
and make other noncritical errors as well. Officials likewise inadvertently
make data entry errors. Databases themselves maintain these errors over
time, compounding problems if databases are compared and matched with
each other.
A well-run system will use the wide variety of information that is
available from a number of sources to make corrections in order to maintain
an accurate system. If, for example, the applicant transposes digits
in his or her driver’s license number, as evidenced by the driver’s
license record, a correction is made and the application is processed.
The corollary is that a failure to match the applicant or his/her
data with another database must not result in the rejection of the applicant.
This is important for a variety of reasons. First, matching is not an
eligibility requirement under HAVA or state law. Second, the database
information is likely to have significant errors. The Social Security
Administration acknowledges that its data is not foolproof, data entry
and other errors in DMV and voter registration agencies are well known,
and simple matching mistakes—from the use of different forms of names
to transposed or missing numbers—are significant. Third, the absence
of information does not suggest a problem. Only positive information
of a disqualifying characteristic should result in the rejection of
a voter in a database matching system. Rejection must be based on a
positive match of the identity of the voter, and a positive match with
a disqualifying characteristic.
In the voter registration context, the failure to find a match does
not provide information that the voter is ineligible. If there is no
match, the voter registration application should be processed on its
own terms.
If the applicant is eligible to vote, then his or her name should be
entered on the list. If necessary, the applicant can be placed on a
“pending” list of individuals who receive the normal election materials
and services but must provide identification (if a first-time voter)
or swear to his or her identity in order to cast a normal ballot.
Uniform and nondiscriminatory practices are important for any process
concerning the registration of voters. We must not go into this election
season burdened by processes that disenfranchise voters.
Sincerely,
/signed/ Jacqueline Jacobberger
President
