Six weeks before its June 5 primary, California election officials are trying to solve errors to its voter database made by its new mandatory (automatic) voter registration system. According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, election officials in California claim that 77,000 voter records were impacted after California’s new voting registration software changed voters’ party preferences and in some cases resulted in a voter potentially being able to receive two ballots for the upcoming primary election.

Under California’s new Motor Voter Act, when a resident applies for a license, they will be automatically registered to vote if he or she is legally eligible to do so. The new voter registration software was aimed to assist with first time registrants and was not readily accessible to residents who were already registered to vote. Thus, the software created different feeds on a single voter and as a result, the issues that the election officials are currently facing happened.  Election officials now are trying to rectify this situation during one of the busiest periods of the year.

This is why automatic registration opens the door for fraud. Automatic registration registers people who have no intention of ever voting in the jurisdiction, are transient, or are otherwise added to the rolls when they should not be. From this recent incident, Automatic registration in California seems to be going against its intended goal of making voter registration easier for election officials, by actually making things harder.

Read the story from the LA Times here.