BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 2455
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Date of Hearing: April 13, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS AND REDISTRICTING
Shirley Weber, Chair
AB 2455
(Chiu & Bonta) - As Amended April 6, 2016
SUBJECT: Electronic voter registration: public postsecondary
educational institutions.
SUMMARY: Requires the California State University (CSU) and
California Community Colleges (CCC) to permit students who
enroll online at the institution to electronically register to
vote through the Web site of the Secretary of State (SOS),
beginning July 1, 2018. Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires the CSU and CCC, not later than July 1, 2018, to
implement a process and the infrastructure to allow a person
who enrolls online at the institution, to submit an affidavit
of voter registration electronically on the Internet Web site
of the SOS, as specified. Encourages the University of
California (UC) to coordinate with the SOS to develop such a
process.
2)Declares the intent of the Legislature, in enacting this bill,
to take preliminary measures towards the establishment of an
automatic voter registration system for California citizens
enrolled at state public college and university campuses.
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EXISTING LAW:
1)Requires, pursuant to the National Voter Registration Act
(NVRA) of 1993, each state to offer voter registration
services at motor vehicle agency offices, offices that provide
public assistance, offices that provide state-funded programs
primarily engaged in providing services to persons with
disabilities, Armed Forces recruitment offices, and other
state and local offices within the state designated as NVRA
voter registration agencies.
2)Provides that a person entitled to register to vote shall be a
United States citizen, a resident of California, not in prison
or on parole for the conviction of a felony, and at least 18
years of age at the time of the next election.
3)Provides that a person may not be registered to vote except by
affidavit of registration.
4)Generally requires a voter registration application to contain
the signature of the applicant.
5)Requires a person who registers to vote online to assent
affirmatively to the use of his or her signature from his or
her driver's license or state identification card, if any, for
voter registration purposes. Requires the SOS to obtain an
electronic copy of the signature of a person who registers to
vote online directly from the Department of Motor Vehicles
(DMV), if the DMV has a signature for the person.
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6)Generally requires a voter's signature on a petition, vote by
mail ballot, provisional ballot, or candidate's nomination
papers, to be compared against that voter's signature on the
voter registration application, and provides that the
signature on the petition, ballot, or nomination papers must
match that on the voter registration in order for that
signature to count.
7)Requires the DMV to transfer records to the SOS of each person
who submits an application for a driver's license or state
identification card, or provides the DMV with a change of
address, and who attests that he or she meets all voter
eligibility requirements. Provides that the records of a
person that are transmitted from the DMV to the SOS pursuant
to this provision shall constitute a completed affidavit of
voter registration for that person unless a) the person
affirmatively declines to register to vote at the DMV, b) the
person does not attest that he or she meets all voter
eligibility requirements while at the DMV, or c) the SOS
determines that the person is not eligible to register to
vote.
8)Requires, pursuant to the Student Voter Registration Act,
every community college and CSU campus that operates an
automated class registration system to permit students,
through an automated program during the class registration
process, to apply to register to vote online by submitting an
affidavit of voter registration electronically on the Internet
Web site of the SOS. Requests the UC system to comply with
this process.
FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown. State-mandated local program; contains
a crimes and infractions disclaimer; contains reimbursement
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direction.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose of the Bill: According to the author:
Young people haven't been registering to vote or
turning out to the polls. In 2014, 18-24 year-olds had
the lowest turnout of all age groups: only 285,000 of
3.5 million eligible young adult voters turned out to
vote. Because of their low voting numbers, the young
adult voice was greatly underrepresented in 2014.
Youth made up a meager 3.9 percent of those who voted,
despite constituting 14.5 percent of the eligible
voting population.
For young people in particular, the process of
registering to vote can be a deterrent and can present
obstacles that affect their ability to register and
vote at greater levels. Young people have higher rates
of geographic mobility, which affects how frequently
they must update their voter registration information.
When young voters move or their information changes,
their registration records may not be updated,
effectively keeping them off of the voter rolls.
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Registering more students to vote - the first step in
getting them to the polls - improves our democracy.
The Student Voting Act will implement an online link
between class enrollment and voter registration for
students at the [UC], [CSU] and [CCC] systems.
Collectively these campuses have approximately 2.8
million students. These public college and university
systems can serve as an important entry point register
hundreds of thousands of additional Californians.
Furthermore, the infrastructure created under AB 2455
will be the first step towards the establishment of an
automated voter registration system for students
enrolled at our state's public college and university
campuses.
2)California New Motor Voter Program: Last year, the Legislature
passed and the Governor signed AB 1461 (Gonzalez), Chapter
729, Statutes of 2015, also known as the California New Motor
Voter Program (CNMVP), which provides for every person who
submits an application for a driver's license or state
identification card, or provides the DMV with a change of
address, and who attests that he or she meets all voter
eligibility requirements, to be registered to vote, unless
that person opts out, as specified. The process established
under the CNMVP is sometimes referred to as "automatic" or
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"automated" voter registration.
The CNMVP will be implemented no later than one year after the
SOS certifies all of the following: 1) California's new
statewide voter registration database, known as VoteCal, is
fully operational; 2) the Legislature has appropriated the
funds necessary for the SOS and the DMV to implement and
maintain the CNMVP; and, 3) regulations required by the CNMVP
have been adopted by the SOS. VoteCal currently is scheduled
to become the voter registration database of record in June of
this year, and neither of the other conditions required for
the implementation of the CNMVP have been met, so it is
unlikely that the CNMVP will be implemented prior to the
middle of 2017.
The DMV is uniquely positioned among governmental bodies to
implement a program like the CNMVP, and to increase voter
registration rates through such a program. First, the DMV
already had obligations under the NVRA to offer voter
registration services-a requirement that was enacted, in part,
due to the fact that motor vehicle departments regularly
interact with a high percentage of the eligible voter
population. As a result, implementing the CNMVP through the
DMV ensured that it would reach a large portion of the
eligible voter population. Second, DMV records already
contain much of the information needed in order to register a
person to vote, meaning that only limited additional
information needs to be collected from a person to complete
that person's registration. Third, the DMV's computer systems
already have an interface with the state's voter registration
system for the purposes of validating and updating voter
registrations. That interface will be crucial for the
implementation of the CNMVP. Finally, the DMV already has
digitized signatures on file for most of its customers, and
California law requires a signature to be included in a
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voter's registration record for a variety of elections-related
purposes. All these factors reduced the challenges to
implementing the CNMVP and increased the likelihood that the
program will result in a significant increase in the number of
registered voters.
This bill declares the intent of the Legislature to take
preliminary measures towards the establishment of an automatic
voter registration system for California citizens enrolled at
state public college and university campuses. If the desire
is to eventually move toward a voter registration process at
colleges and universities that is similar to the CNMVP
process, there are a number of obstacles that will need to be
overcome before such a process is feasible. Unlike the DMV,
the CSU and CCC systems do not typically have digitized
signatures on file for their customers (students).
Furthermore, the type of interface that the DMVs computers
have with the state's voter registration system does not exist
with the CSU and CCC systems. In light of these facts, any
future attempt to implement a CNMVP-like process at the CSU
and CCC systems will face obstacles that did not exist for
implementing the program with the DMV. Furthermore, such a
program at the CSU and CCC system will reach a substantially
smaller portion of the eligible voter population than the
CNMVP will reach through the DMV.
3)Student Voter Registration Act: AB 593 (Ridley-Thomas),
Chapter 819, Statutes of 2003, created the Student Voter
Registration Act of 2003 which, among other things, required
the SOS to provide every high school, CCC, CSU, and UC campus
with voter registration forms and information describing
eligibility requirements and instructions on how to return the
completed form. SB 854 (Ridley-Thomas), Chapter 481, Statutes
of 2007, amended the law to require every CCC and CSU that
operates an automated class registration system to permit
students, during the class registration process, to receive a
voter registration application that is preprinted with
personal information relevant to voter registration, as
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specified. The UC system was encouraged to comply with this
provision.
Following the launch of California's online voter registration
system, the Student Voter Registration Act was updated by AB
1446 (Mullin), Chapter 593, Statutes of 2014, to eliminate
requirements for the SOS to provide high schools, CCC, CSU,
and UC campuses with a number of paper voter registration
forms consistent with the number of students enrolled, and
instead required the SOS to provide voter registration forms
upon request. AB 1446 also updated the voter registration
process at CSU and CCC campuses that was created through SB
854 by requiring that an automated class registration system
permit students to apply to register to vote online by
submitting an affidavit of voter registration electronically
on the SOS's Internet Web site. According to an annual report
prepared by the SOS, in 2015, 14,669 students at CCC, CSU, and
UC campuses completed a voter registration application online
using the process established by the Student Voter
Registration Act.
This bill would require the CCC and the CSU systems, and would
request the UC system, to create a similar process to the one
that exists under the Student Voter Registration Act, that
would allow a student to submit an electronic voter
registration affidavit at the time he or she enrolls online at
the higher education institution.
4)California Registration Statistics: According to the most
recent report of registration produced by the SOS, there are
17,259,413 registered voters in California out of an estimated
24,584,491 Californians who are eligible to register to vote,
meaning that approximately 70.2 percent of eligible
Californians are registered to vote. Over the last 50 years,
the percentage of eligible Californians who were registered to
vote has been as high as 80.2 percent (in 1996) and as low as
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66.3 percent (in 1979). According to data from the US Census,
eligible Californians aged 18-24 are less likely to be
registered to vote than any other age group; in 2014, eligible
18- to 24-year olds in California were only about two-thirds
as likely to be registered to vote as eligible Californians as
a whole, and were only about 56% as likely to be registered as
eligible voters aged 65 or older.
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REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
Student Senate for the California Community Colleges (prior
version)*
University of California Student Association (prior version)*
Opposition
Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (prior version)*
*Note: All letters of support and opposition received by the
committee on this bill refer to a prior version of the bill that
would have required the CSU and CCC systems, and would have
requested the UC system, to implement an automated voter
registration process similar to the CNMVP. Recent amendments to
this bill substantially narrowed its scope.
Analysis Prepared by:Ethan Jones / E. & R. / (916) 319-2094
AB 2455
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