California won’t register to vote those in US illegally

Immigrants living in the U.S. illegally will not automatically be registered to vote in California come April, despite online stories claiming that’s the case.

At issue is a California law taking effect in April that will automatically register people to vote when they get a driver’s license, an ID card, or update their address with the Department of Motor Vehicles. California allows immigrants living in the country illegally to obtain drivers licenses, leading some websites to falsely claim they’ll be automatically signed up to vote.

California’s new program has safeguards to ensure only U.S. citizens can go through the voter registration process. A DMV worker processing a drivers’ license application for an undocumented immigrant, for example, will not be able to access the voter registration boxes, which will be greyed out.

“To be eligible, you have to be a U.S. citizen,” said Jessica Gonzalez, a DMV spokeswoman.

———

This is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.