A Canadian man who has permanent residence in California says he was surprised last month when he received a notice in the mail saying he was registered to vote.
"I got this little post card thing," Randall Marquis, who lives in Newport Beach, told ABC10. "I thought, 'That's the stupidest thing I ever heard.' I threw it out."
Then Marquis remembered an audit of the DMV found 23,000 people had been wrongfully registered to vote. The DMV said it was an administrative processing error and that safeguards had been taken to resolve the issue.
"I thought, 'Well, obviously they didn't,'" Marquis said.
The 63 year old, who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years, contacted a reporter at The L.A. Times, who in turn, contacted the DMV and Secretary of State's office. That led to an audit which found these additional 1,500 wrongfully registrations.
The DMV says the error occurred when DMV technicians processed customer requests at field offices to change voter eligibility responses on drivers license applications. They say no undocumented immigrants were registered.
"We have worked quickly with the Department of Technology to correct these errors and have also updated the programming and added additional safeguards to improve this process," DMV Director Jean Shiomoto said in a statement.
In addition, the revelations in the audit have prompted Alex Padilla, California's Secretary of State, to demand a new investigation into the DMV.
Even so, the report is already being used for political purposes. Mark Mesuer, the Republican candidate for California Secretary of State, described the errors in a tweet as "fraudulent voter registrations" that prove his challenger isn't fit for the job.
Marquis disagrees. He said President Trump's unfounded accusation after the 2016 election about widespread voter fraud in California was actually one of the reasons he decided to come forward and share his story.
"I didn't want the DMV to get away with the statement that they fixed their problems," Marquis said. "I also didn't want the current administration to be able to, in the future, turn around and say they lost seats in California because two million voters shouldn't have been registered that voted."
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