How does voter verification work in California?

And you can't call me a racist. My mom immigrated legally to the United States in 1959 and she became a citizen in 1976. I am a half Hispanic and Irish origin. I speak fluent Spanish. I don't listen to Los Tigres del Norte who complain saying that California was once theirs and they're Mexican German polka songs that illegals love to listen to.

New Mexico has the same basic system. When you get your drivers license, the DMV clerk asks (in Spanish if need be) do you want to be registered to vote? If the Citizen/Migrant/Immigrant/Illegal Alien/Whatever says Yes or Si, they are registered to vote. No verification of birth status is needed or asked for. Fortunately, next year the state will come into compliance with the "Real ID" act, which means the Citizen/Migrant/Immigrant/Illegal Alien/Whatever will need to show proof of US Citizenship and if they can't their drivers license will say "Not a Valid Proof of Citizenship". FYI: Fake Birth Certificates can be had for less than 100 dollars.

First, you need to determine what *kind* of voter fraud you're talking about. What's done about it depends on this. Kinds of fraud, in order from what the available data indicates are the most common to least common, are:
-- Voter suppression.
-- Voter registration fraud.
-- Voter intimidation.
-- Voter ineligibility.
-- Double-voting.
-- Voter identity fraud.
There's also two more, which are difficult to rank in that list due to the sparsity of data:
-- Absentee ballot fraud.
-- Vote selling.

The reason that first distinction is important is because all the hoopla over Voter ID only ever addresses one item on the list, the last one (Voter identity fraud), which is also by far the smallest source of fraudulent activity on the list, but also tends by its very nature to increase dramatically voter suppression. And depending on the extent of the suppression caused, combating ID fraud may count as fraud in its own right (as happened with North Carolina). The evidence is exceptionally clear, however, that if you care about the *full* integrity of the vote, which means also ensuring access to the vote for eligible persons rather than only restricting ineligible persons, then Voter ID is proven (as in mathematically certain, not merely an opinion) to be a far worse cure than the disease it remedies.

As for the specifics, the approach varies -- not just in the sense of between the states, but that it varies highly even in different regions of California (which is ultimately what you asked about) or even between one year and the next in the same region. But, there are some pretty clear trends.

Generally, voter suppression as an issue is ignored by conservatives and highlighted by liberals, specifically because suppression tends to hit heaviest on minorities and the poor, but outside of a few federal court cases, virtually nothing has been done about it.

Voter registration fraud is usually split, with enforcement (arrest/prosecution) given few if any resources, and instead efforts here focus on the back-end cleanup to ensure that fraudulent registrations don't make it on the list, such as checking it against other databases (including the national ones), which is a required action for the CA Sec State to do.

Voter intimidation depends on the particular precinct, and generally if the efforts are overt then arrests are made but covert ones are usually left alone.

Voter ineligibility is, interestingly, almost never about non-citizens voting. Instead, the majority of cases -- amounting to perhaps half a dozen per election -- involve felons who had been stripped of the right to vote. In most cases, they are successfully prevented from voting (or are forced to vote provisional, which won't be counted once their ineligibility is confirmed), and prosecution and conviction rates are very high.

Double-voting usually only occurs in a few cases nationwide per election, and interestingly, the majority of double-voters since stats have been kept (going back to the early 1980s) have been Republicans. The two cases I'd heard for this election both were. This is often, but not always, combined with absentee fraud, as usually the absentee ballot is one of the votes. Prosecution and conviction rates are very high.

Voter identity fraud, the only kind that Voter ID laws would stop, has been shown in multiple analyses to be nearly non-existent -- as in, less than a dozen or so since the 2000 election, including mid-terms in the count. Contrary to popular opinion, Chicago's cemeteries don't actually come out to vote, and people with integrity know not to cite that. When a credible case is discovered, prosecution and conviction rates are very high.

Absentee ballot fraud is difficult to detect, except when used as part of double-voting, which is why it is listed separately above. Because of that, it can be difficult to prosecute, but cases where there was decent evidence (non-matching signatures, wrong person signing, etc.) have been successfully prosecuted while non-conforming ballots (missing signature, etc.) are simply not counted. What has been done, though, is a mathematical modeling of risk range as it relates to the overall number of absentee ballots, and because such ballots are a small percentage of the overall vote, there is high confidence that it has never tipped a single federal office's race.

Vote selling is technically illegal almost everywhere, but is also almost impossible to prove, and is thus almost never prosecuted. Further, if the principle of voting includes that a person's allowed to do what they want with their own vote, then it's not really an electoral *fraud* at all, and merely just a particular kind of black market that the government doesn't want to condone.

I think the true answer to the question is ... NONE ... at least not effective ones.

Dem tattoos dough.....

I'm not opposed to ID required to vote, but feel that IDs should be provided (free of charge) to all legal citizens once they turn 18.

California uses biometric data - they're called signatures

I live in Vermont and find it crazy you can vote here without showing an ID. We do have to register, which you can do online and your local town is supposed to verify the validity of your license. On voting day you just show up and say who you are and they check you off a list, no ID needed. Vermont is made up of many small towns and one could browse the obituaries a few days before the election and make a list and just drive from town to town saying you are a dead person and vote in their place. I am sure the voter list is not updated daily and there there is the chance the poll worker may know the deceased person and would know you are not them, but you could probably still vote several times. I have lived and voted in both Georgia and Kentucky previously, and both require ID at the poll; I just don't get it, I think it should be required. Then there is the issue of states that allow illegals to get a license (12 of them), and the training and ability of poll workers to recognize these types of licenses and how they would not be valid for voting. How many would slip by the poll workers or the registration process due to incompetence? I work with law enforcement at all levels at my job and there is so much to know and keep up with and it is nearly impossible. These are sworn, trained, and experienced officers and there are various issues every day about something. We expect law enforcement to be the cream of the crop and top on the line when dealing with laws, regulations, and the like, and if they can't even get it right all the time, how do we expect voluntary poll workers and low echelon government employees (no disrespect meant) to keep up with ever changing rules and validation of documents? Having someone show ID at the poll is at least one step, and probably the most simple, to curtail fraud, but if we are not even willing to do that, how will we ever even begin to fix and prevent voter fraud.

I live here and I don't think there is any.

I've heard it said that California is a very liberal state. (I live here). It's past liberal. It's hypocritical!

SSG Jessica Bautista Could you please post the answer to your question. I am having difficulty finding it in the comments.