DMV, not motor voter, to blame

The 2015 law sponsored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, that automatically registers residents to vote when they go to the state Department of Motor Vehicles to get or renew a driver’s license or state ID has been plagued with problems. DMV clerks have registered up to 1,500 people who are not citizens and made 70,000-plus errors on voter details. This has led state Sen. Patricia Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, to introduce a bill that would scrap "motor voter" instead of waiting for the completion of an audit that will include recommendations on how to improve the program.

Better to wait. These issues clearly stem from DMV incompetence. Besides the "motor voter" fiasco, the agency’s failure to anticipate the workload created by a new obligation that it issue federal "Real ID" cards that will be required in 2020 to board domestic flights has led to massive lines. Last week, DMV disclosed that it had been warned by the federal government in November that it had botched this obligation by requiring just a single form of documentation. That means 2.3 million residents who obtained the cards may have to provide further proof of their identity. No wonder DMV Director Jean Shiomoto abruptly retired this month. Increasingly, it’s apparent her permanent replacement should be a capable outsider, not a DMV lifer.