BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 2455 Page 1 CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS AB 2455 (Chiu and Bonta) As Amended August 15, 2016 Majority vote -------------------------------------------------------------------- |ASSEMBLY: |52-23 |(May 23, 2016) |SENATE: |26-12 |(August 18, | | | | | | |2016) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -------------------------------------------------------------------- Original Committee Reference: E. & R. 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 Internet 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. AB 2455 Page 2 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. The Senate amendments: 1)Move the Assembly-approved contents of the bill to a different section of law and make a conforming change. 2)Require the SOS, when he or she receives a voter registration record from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), as specified, for a person who is already registered to vote, to use the information received to update the voter's registration record. Provide that if the record does not contain information for which a space is provided on the voter registration application, but that information was provided in the voter's prior registration, the information from the prior registration shall remain part of the voter's record. FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Senate Appropriations Committee: 1)Minor costs to the CSU, CCC, and UC to provide a link or redirect students online to the SOS website regarding voter registration. 2)Unknown, but likely minor costs to SOS related to the increase in printing the Voter Information Guide. COMMENTS: 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 AB 2455 Page 3 voice was greatly underrepresented in 2014. Youth made up a meager 3.9% of those who voted, despite constituting 14.5% of the eligible voting population. "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." SB 854 (Ridley-Thomas), Chapter 481, Statutes of 2007, required every CCC and CSU campus 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 specified. The UC system was encouraged to comply with this provision. Following the launch of California's online voter registration system, the provisions of SB 854 were updated by AB 1446 (Mullin), Chapter 593, Statutes of 2014, to require 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 this process. This bill would require the CCC and the CSU systems, and would request the UC system, to create a similar process to allow a student to submit an electronic voter registration affidavit at the time he or she enrolls online at the higher education institution. The Senate amendments to this bill move the Assembly-approved AB 2455 Page 4 contents of the bill to a different section of code. Additionally, the Senate amendments make minor changes to existing law to ensure that registered voters' previously-identified voting preferences are not inadvertently removed when they are re-registered to vote at the DMV pursuant to AB 1461 (Gonzalez), Chapter 729, Statutes of 2015. This bill, as amended in the Senate, is generally consistent with Assembly actions. Please see the policy committee analysis for a full discussion of this bill. Analysis Prepared by: Ethan Jones / E. & R. / (916) 319-2094 FN: 0004207