Why California needs to upgrade its voter registration system (with Star Wars Memes)

Originally shared February 25, 2022

Currently, 4 million eligible Californians are not registered to vote. That’s about 10% of CA residents.⁠ California’s front-end Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) system was supposed to make voter registration at the DMV easier. But by asking DMV customers IF they’d like to register to vote and to state citizenship status, these questions became another barrier that prevents Californians from having their voices heard in elections.⁠ California’s Front-end AVR needs an upgrade to better serve formerly incarcerated citizens, citizens not fluent in English, noncitizens, and even registered voters.⁠

Even though our current Automatic Voter Registration system makes it easy for people to register to vote at the DMV, over 50% of unregistered DMV customers decline registration. Failure to register a large portion of citizens at the DMV is disenfranchisement.

With California’s current Automatic Voter Registration system: if a non-citizen Californian makes a mistake during transactions at state agencies, they may face potentially severe legal consequences.