Senate Standing Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments

Good morning and welcome to the informational hearing. Today's informational hearing will focus on voter identification in California. For years, we have heard the complaints. California allows anyone to vote, California does not require ID. That is simply not true.

California confirms the identity of voters before an election through registration, when someone goes to vote in person, and after someone returns their vote by mail ballot. California confirms the voter's identity because, like the rest of the nation, we believe in the integrity of the voter roles and the election process.

It provides confidence in our election results and ultimately confidence in our electoral system. At today's hearing, we will hear from the Secretary of State and a county elections official about their role in confirming a voter's identity. We will hear about the practices of other states and how California compares.

We will also hear about how often election fraud happens and what happens when a complaint is made. And finally, we will hear from advocacy organizations on their thoughts about California's voting, voter identification procedures and ways to improve it. Thank you for taking time to join us this morning and we certainly look forward to the robust discussion.

I'd like to turn it over to our Vice Chair for any opening comments.

The topic of today's hearing is very interesting because as you may remember, I proposed four different election integrity bills. I don't want to go through all of them, other than one of them, all are related to voter integrity election integrity issue. One of them was SB 405, was directly related to this voter identification issue.

But to me it was very common sense. But for whatever reason, lack of us getting the motion now, all my bill died on the spot in one meeting. But today is kind of surprise for me to have this hearing on the election integrity issue, particularly on this voter ID issue, which is a hot topic.

As you know, there is a movement to collect the signatures to put that on the ballot next year. So this is the concerns and the interest of the California citizens. So I'm looking forward to hearing what the status of that voter ID is. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now move to the first panelists on current voter identification in California. Our first speakers are the Honorable Dr. Shirley Weber, the California Secretary of State, and Tricia Weber, Santa Cruz County Clerk Registrar of Voters, please have a seat and you may begin when you are ready. Thank you both for being here.

Okay, it's on. Thank you. Well, good morning and I want to thank you. Sorry, I'm running late. Obviously, this is the week of voting rights in California, whether it's the 50th anniversary of the language Voting Rights Bill or whether it's the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Bill in general.

So there are lots of seminars, workshops, hearings, and I was in a meeting this morning to welcome those from the LAC community to basically have their workshops today.

So I want to thank you for this opportunity to address the Committee on this particular topic, a very important topic that has significance not only for this Committee, but obviously for people throughout the United States and California. And it's obviously an issue that's being raised at every level. But make assurance that this is no new issue.

Obviously, voter ID is not new in this country. It never has been, and it has had multiple kinds of consequences as a result of the positive as well as the negative aspect of voter ID.

I want to make, so I accepted this invitation because part of it is the need to correct some misinformation and disinformation about voter ID in California.

There is a myth that we do not have voter ID simply because we do not demand the voters present their identification at the time of voting in terms of being at the polls, but we do have voter ID.

It's not that people can just register to vote and have no information at all and no verification of who they are as to whether or not they're able to vote in California. Be clear that we have a process for voter ID in California, and it works in California.

California's voter ID process begins at the time people register to vote. To register vote in the state, you must produce a California driver's license or a state ID. If you do not have an ID, you must provide the last four digits of your Social Security number.

And individuals who do not have any of the above forms of ID will be assigned a unique identifier by VoteCal, the California vote Registration Database. All of these items are securely verified. The driver's license numbers and the state ID numbers are verified by checking them against Department of Motor Vehicle records.

The last four digits of the Social Security are matched against Social Security Administration records and unique identifiers are verified by election officials. I want to say a few words about how who is eligible to vote in California. People think anyone can vote in California. They cannot.

To register to vote in California, you must be a US Citizen and a California resident, not an or, but and a California resident to vote in California. You must be at least 18 years old on Election Day, so you are able to register before you turn 18 Providing you become 18 at the day of election.

You are able to vote in California if you're not currently incarcerated in a state or federal prison for a felony. So you can vote in California if you're in jail.

But if you've been convicted of a felony and you are in a state or federal prison physically sitting there, you cannot vote in California. Once you have served your term and you're released, you can vote immediately. You can register to vote and you can vote in California.

And if you're currently not determined by a court to be mentally incompetent to vote if you have no matter what your neighbor says about you, but if the court has not determined that you're mentally incompetent, you can register and vote in the State of California if you meet the other qualifications.

On the registration form, applicants must check a box marked YES to confirm their U.S. citizenship. If they fail to do this, this registration form will not be accepted. They will not be able to vote. State law provides that an affidavit or registration is proof of citizenship for voting purposes only.

It cannot be used to prove citizenship for any other purpose, but only for voting you do need to show, do you need to show ID at the time that you vote in California? In most cases, no. California does not generally require voters to show ID at the polls.

IDs will only be required at a polling place if all of the following apply. That you are voting for the first time in a federal election and you registered by mail or online and did not provide your California ID or Social Security number at the time of registration.

So if you actually filled these forms out and did not provide the necessary documentation that is required, you cannot, you then at that point must provide your ID and information at the time of voting.

Voter ID Requirements in General to those who call for a statewide voter ID requirement, I must say that it is redundant because we have already had that done. We have had the ID identified. For those who champion such a requirement, I would challenge them to tell the truth about what such requirements have meant in other states.

There are a few examples of recent voter ID legislation enacted since 2020 around the United States. In Georgia, a voter ID law has been made easier to challenge a voter's eligibility based on unreliable information that someone can challenge your ability to vote based on any information.

In Nebraska, a voter ID law imposes photo ID requirements on both in person and absentee voting. In New Hampshire, a voter ID law has restricted the options for establishing a voter's identification both for voter registration and for in-person voting.

In Nebraska, excuse me, in North Dakota, a voter ID law requires voters who present ID other than a driver's license to also show proof of citizenship. And in Oklahoma, a voter ID law has blocked Native Americans from voting if they live on a reservation and therefore do not have a, quote, traditional street address.

The bottom line is that in a number of places voter ID laws are making it more difficult for citizens to vote. And in other places, voter ID actually means for many, voter suppression.

We should all be vigilant about any voter ID proposal we are asking to render judgment on, especially, examine it carefully, be skeptical, ask questions, study the effects it will have if it actually becomes law, and examine the consequences on the front end.

If as a citizen we do not take the trouble to defend our democracy by educating ourselves, by engaging in critical thinking, by asking questions, then we will lose this democracy that we say we hold dear and all the individual rights that go with it.

If you, I'm not sure if you're going to ask the questions that were mentioned that you want answered. You want me to answer those? Okay. Why not? Many complaints relating to elections fraud does. How many do we have? How many complaints do we have?

You know, when I came into office in 2021, someone told me there were 2 million illegal people voting in California. 2 million. I asked for one. I have yet to receive the one. Because we don't have 2 million people illegally voting in California. There's no data that says that.

And actually, according to data published by the Heritage foundation, which is often a conservative group, only 12 voter fraud cases have been prosecuted in California since 2021. 12. And this is out of 27 million Californians, a number that is substantially insignificant. And to put this in context, as I said, California's cast.

We've cast over 15 million votes in 2024 and over 17 million votes in 2020. And yet we've only had 12 voter fraud cases at that time. How many are related to voter identification complaints do we get? We would need to know exactly what at least 10 different ways can actually California law to establish a person's identifier purposes.

And as a result, there are numerous ways in which people can ask for and question and file complaints. The number one vote fraud cases have actually been prosecuted in California, of which voter ID problems are a subset and indicates the number is extremely low and has been declared virtually insignificant. What happens after a person files a complaint?

Where does it go? We take all of our inquiries very seriously and we take on these various actions that we can take. One, we refer the case to the county prosecutor or the Department of Justice for further investigation.

We investigate the matters ourselves sometimes as we have an in house investigation Department and capacity to do so. And if the complaint is found to be groundless, there is no further action taken.

We are not constantly evaluating and prosecuting individuals when there's been no foundation for the complaint itself. After the issue is resolved, if there's any follow up with the person who has any complaints, do we do that? That depends on, as I said, on the circumstances.

The complaint about a process or procedure may involve follow up by the complainant and the complaining party. And complaints against an individual do not often involve follow up if there's no foundation to it.

If someone is complaining about the process that we use, we look into it and to see if there's actually any evidence and information for it. The question is often asked, am I confident in California voter rolls are accurate? Yes, I am.

We have a robust list maintenance process that involves checking county death records, other state agencies and change of address data to maintain accurate voter rolls. Update death certificate and data is processed once a week via the California Department of Public Health. So what we get, we process it every week.

The National Change of Address List posted by operated by the US Postal Service is matched against California active voter rolls once a month and update felon data is updated from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation at least once a week. Voters are purged from the rolls, typically for one of 2, 3 reasons.

One, a person has been deemed mentally incompetent by a court of law that has sent the information to a US to have them removed. A person has been imprisoned for conviction of a felony and as I pointed out, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sends us records once a week and a person is recently deceased.

And it pointed out, the Department of Public Health sends us that information and we process it weekly. So we have a process in place that we utilize to basically purge our rolls. We don't go through just looking for people and throwing everybody out.

But if a person meets those three categories, we basically take them from the rolls until obviously, if they're let out again, if they're in prison and they're released from prison, then they're sent back, they're sent the list back to us, and obviously they're once again eligible to register to vote if they choose to.

Somebody asked what recommendations would I suggest to improve our voter information process? I think we have a system, given the size of California, that works effectively very well.

A wish list would include support from the Legislature for necessary upgrades to VoteCal, our statewide voter registration and database, and sufficient funding in future years for necessary technology upgrades or replacements.

As we talk about what might be a much more effective and efficient system that we have, let's not only have great ideas, but also let's have funding for the technology and the personnel to upgrade them. What is my part in maintaining these voter rolls? Obviously, this all comes to the Secretary of State's office.

This information we get weekly, monthly concerning who's been taken off the list, who's been put on the rolls, those kinds of things, and how come across any instances. Have we come across any instances of fraud? How do we process and deal with it?

As I pointed out, we have a process in place that deals with fraud in instances, whether it's looking at something that's come directly to our office, whether someone is given something that could be possibly examined by our legal staff as well as by our attorney generals and others. Once we find those issues, we do examine them.

We make sure that there is no prosecutable offense. And if there is, then we take it further. But by and large, most of the things are minor issues that are there. And as I said, out of 26 million possible voters, we had 12 in the last five years that were fraud.

And I'm not sure if any of them were ever prosecuted because oftentimes the issue boils down to be confusion because we have people who turn in a ballot and they're older, and somebody comes and takes them to vote.

And so when we discover the two things that are there, that's why I say we investigate to see if there really is fraud, because fraud requires intent to commit fraud and not just an accident that you made. So we don't have a tremendous number of examples of fraud in California.

And in fact, the courts have said basically it's negligible.

Thank you, Madam Secretary. We will move to our next speaker and then open it up to questions.

Good morning, Chair Cervantes, Vice Chair Choi, and Members of the Committee, who I see stepped out. I am Tricia Weber, the County Clerk Registrar of Voters for Santa Cruz County, and I am also currently the Vice President of our state Association, the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials. I'm honored to be with you today.

I was asked to discuss what happens in the counties regarding the registration process and when a voter casts a ballot during an election.

Realizing that you just heard from Dr. Weber about the registration process and VoteCal, I'm going to try my best not to do a lot of repetition, but I need to say what happens in VoteCal is pretty much mimicking when we put in a registration card, the online system, and everything goes to VoteCal, and it's pretty much the same.

So when our office receives a voter registration card, it comes to us either by mail or it's dropped off by the voter. We scan the card to start to work it into the file and we review it for completeness. If there's any incomplete information, we input the card and mark it as pending.

Then we send a letter to the voter to request the missing information. That notice tells the voter we'll keep their record in the pending status for 180 days, waiting for them to respond.

And if they take longer than 180 days, they may be required to start the registration process all over again rather than just fix the missing information. After we input the voter registration information into the management system, the record is uploaded to VoteCal at the Secretary of State's office in order to be processed.

In VoteCal, the record goes through several checks like is there an existing record for this voter? Is the verification of the driver's license versus the name and the date of birth, verification of the last four digits of the Social Security number versus the name and the date of birth.

And is that data input in the correct format in order to be uploaded, among other checks. If there are any questions about the existing record or the address or the way the name is spelled, or possibly there's been a name change, VoteCal sends a message down to the county in order to review.

And then the county goes and does this stuff and answers the message on whether it's a match or it's not a match.

And if the voter has not provided their driver's license or their last four digits of their Social Security number, that record is now tagged with a unique identifier and an FTFV or a first time federal voter flag. I know you're all thinking, I know what a voter card looks or registration card looks like.

I know everything that's on there. And you're right, there is a space for both the driver's license and the last four digits of the Social Security. However, there's also a federal form. It can be used in all 50 states and it only has certain information on it.

It has the name, the residence address, the mailing address, the political party affiliation, the date of birth, and the signature. And then has three other boxes. One's an optional telephone number. One is for the race or ethnic group with a note to say, look at the instructions.

And an ID number, again with a note that says look at the instructions. There's also 19 pages of instructions, so that's a lot to read through. And this form is where we see most of the first time federal voters coming from because they don't read what is required for California in that 19 pages.

So they leave this ID number off. FTFV voters are the only voters that need to show ID so we can clear that flag. They can show their driver's license or any other document that is listed in the Help America Vote act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by George W. Bush in 2002.

Some of those documents are a passport, an employee ID, a health card, health club card, a bank statement, property tax statement and more. But I'm going to tell you this is not a very large number. Specifically for Santa Cruz County. As of 5:54 pm yesterday, we had 171,310 active registered voters.

And of that number, 125 voters had an FTFE flag. That is .073%. California also offers same day registration or conditional voter registration, depending on what you want to call it, where voters can register and vote on the same day. The registration process for these voters is exactly the same. Voters have to fill out a voter registration card.

That card's data has to be input and uploaded to VoteCal. Counties have to answer any type of messages that come back down. It is only after the registration process is done that it is considered complete. And then we do additional checks to see whether or not we can count that same day registration's ballot.

Voterless maintenance is another activity that I want to touch on. This is something that happens 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As mentioned before, we are constantly receiving messages from VoteCal.

That includes the CDCR list that Dr. Weber spoke about, talks about post office data, but we're also getting, from the post office, data outside of VoteCal that we act upon. We get lists from our local Department of Public Health, not just from the California Department of Public Health. We are getting lists from our superior courts.

We are getting the messages from the the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of people who need to be canceled because of incarceration or on the converse side, that their voting rights have been restored. We also get communications directly from voters and from family members.

We act upon each of those communications to perform maintenance on the voter file in accordance with both federal and state laws. So now that we've talked about registration and maintenance, next let's talk about what happens when the polls are open for voting. As you know, there are two types of voting, in-person and by mail.

When a voter is voting by mail, they return their voted ballot in their assigned ballot envelope. In Santa Cruz, we run that return envelope through a machine to capture the signature. Then an image of that signature is put onto a screen next to the image from the voter registration card. A staff member compares these two images.

If there is comparison, then the signature is marked as good and that envelope can then be opened, the ballot extracted, reviewed for rips, tears and other things that could cause the ballot to not be read correctly and the ballot is moved in for tabulation.

If the staff member does not see comparison, then the signature is marked in review and two other staff members then have to review that that signature.

If both of those staff members still see that there's no comparison, then the envelope comes to me and I'm the one who makes the final determination on whether or not to challenge that signature.

If I challenge it, then we send out a letter and other forms of communication to the voter telling them that we had a problem with non comparison of their signature. And here is how you can cure it and here's the time frame for you to do so.

All our staff Members who do signature verification are trained and they all have copies of the election codes where it discusses how to do signature verification. When a person votes in when voting in person, the voter approaches the election officer and gives them their name and address.

The election officer then verifies that information against the file and checks to see if that voter has already cast a ballot in this current election. The voter then signs an oath saying that they are who they are and that they have not already voted in this election.

We update that voter's history to show in-person voting when they check in and we retain that signed roster for five years per the elections code and we use that roster during the canvas period to do our reconciliation audits. I was also asked to touch on post canvas audits or post election canvas. I love to do that.

If any of you know me, I am the numbers person and the canvas is my favorite part of the entire election. I'm all about that, reconciling and making sure that I can count for every ballot and I can count for every seal and every piece of paper and every envelope that flows through my office.

But in the interest of time I'll control myself and I will say that the canvas period is where can account for the ballots. There are several requirements that are laid out in the elections code for reconciliation.

VoteCal sends us daily spreadsheets to show our totals in the various categories which we also reconcile against and we look at all the signatures, voter participation, ballot totals, manual tallies to confirm the votes and more. On the topic of voter ID, I want to say that as CA CEO, we do not take a position on policy.

We will only discuss the implementation of bills when they are presented and how it would flow within our office and in the procedure. So everything that I'm going to say right here is my personal talk about or thoughts on voter ID. I know that there are voters who want to show their ID.

They hand them to me all the time. I thank them, but then I hand it back and say, I am required to have you say to me in your own words, your name and your address so I can check you in.

I haven't encountered personally any pushback from a voter, and I've been in elections since 1998, so I've never had a voter say to me, I want you to take my ID. They go, thank you, and then they proceed on because they understand I am doing what I need to do.

My main question regarding voter ID is exactly what it would be used for. If it's to ease checking in. Yeah, cool. I could see the poll books taking a driver's license and swiping it down through the thing and having that pull up so we could, you know, go and see it.

So it takes away having to try to spell. You know, some last names are harder to spell. I mean, we have issues since we're a 1B and a 2B Weber. Right. You know, so I can see that it might speed it up.

But if it's to identify the voter versus the picture, then I can see that that's problematic and subjective. That's why signature verification, which is also could be viewed as being subjective, requires three levels before something happens.

And, you know, as long as, if we're to do voter ID as a visual, then there's got to be clear guidelines and requirements that are set out, and there's got to be training on how to do that. And there's got to be something on what to do when your driver's license photo is more than 12 years old.

Right. We change a lot as we age. What ID would be allowable? Is it just a photo ID? Is it any photo ID? Does it have to have a signature? Is that something that would be looking at that? What happens if you don't have a driver's license that has a signature on it?

Where does your ID come from? Does it have to be current? Could it be expired? Does it have to have the current information on it? Like, if it is your driver's license that you would be showing, what if your address is different? How do you reconcile all of that?

I can see that this would be a barrier for people who don't have a driver's license or if it has to match everything on there and current information, then that could be costly in order to update. Voter ID for vote by mail voters is another thing that I can see that would be logistically problematic. Right.

That information has to be on the outside. It can't be on the inside. We can't open up the ballot envelope to retrieve something because then the ballot is now available to see even if it hasn't been verified. So that means there's got to be something put on the exterior of the envelope.

Well, I know as a voter that would concern me to send back an envelope that has now my name, my address, my signature and my driver's license number, or my last four digits of my Social Security number. So we would all and counties have to redesign our envelopes in order to cover that.

And that is a costly thing, not just to redesign it, but then to create the ability to peel open the flap but not unseal the envelope, et cetera.

So I can see that voters might be disenfranchised due to, and I could also see that people would be disenfranchised due to missing information because they're not wanting to put all of that information on the mail. So thank you and I'm here to answer any questions. I didn't get my questions ahead of time.

Thank you both for your time this morning. We do have a couple Committee Members that had to run to speak but they will be back. I know they wanted to also ask a couple questions. But let me move it to our Vice Chair before I jump in. Dr. Choi.

Thank you Chair for giving me that opportunity to ask questions.

I really appreciate both of you making that presentation and listening to both of you. I feel like we have nothing to worry about. Sounds like a perfect system. Right.

But from Republican point of view and who showed very much of my interest through my four pillars that I described a while ago, which was dead with no motion in this Committee. But there are so many different aspects in dealing with the election issue.

But I think today we are primarily focusing upon two issues is first time voter identifying, identification and secondly voter roll. And then also, your name is Tracy?

Tricia.

Tricia mentioned also canvassing the counting time, if you meant to that by canvassing is a town counting period of the ballots that so many issues which is and a whole different issue. One of my bills was rather than requiring for the mail ballot to be placed by the election day.

Why not we give a burden to the voters as well to require the ballots to arrive by voting date so that canvassing time be shortened? I mean the voters should also have the responsibility. I hear a lot of issues related to that kind of suggestion is votor intimidation. I'm not intimidating, but I'm talking about the efficiency and cost anxiety.

And then also Secretary of State when you were serving with me on the Assembly. I mean you're a very Professor type historian, a lot of history and very interesting to hear of your remarks on many different issues.

So I know you are a very logical person and you have become this Secretary of State and dealing with this very important issue. And you are doing your best. And one of the issues is the problem that we see.

Like in my case, I was not allowed to come to the first orientation because my election results were too close. So I missed the invitation to get the orientation. I came later for the orientation. And the swearing in date this year was which was December 5th or 6th. Yeah.

Anyway, the legislators swearing in date comes before Secretary of State's certification of the election results. To me that alone is very illogical. What if secretary disputes and then rejects the result because of voter fraud or whatever she has discovered and we swear in before she certifies. I put my signature. This is a true result of the election.

But it happens because of so many issues, the same thing voter registration. I mean that is very generous to accommodate everybody in there. But is there a voter intimidation or voter suppression by allowing them? We do have a deadline to voter registration.

Why do we have a voter registration at the same time allow them same day voter, you know the registration and which delays so long which takes about 38 days I believe until secretary can certify. So there are many other side issues. But let me go back to the first two major.

The issue which is a very important, voter ID. You described how for the first time voters can register in that application to vote. I see two important major reasons. Two major aspects that we need to be focused on. Number one is are you a citizen? The citizenship verification.

Because that's one of the three or four different requirements by federal law. Okay. Other than age, incarceration, et cetera. Second issue is that are you Stephen Choi as you said, or are you pretending you are Stephen Choi? So there's a photo identification. So how do we identify whom you are claiming that is you?

And typical form of requirement is borrow ID requirement is let me see your ID. What is your ID? And you mentioned several different forms of IDs typically will be driver's license. Let me ask you a question. If a driver's license alone is appropriate for citizenship. To me it's not in California anybody.

I mean that doesn't driver's license condition issue. DMV does not require citizenship. We had that issue before and about 10 dozen years ago we abolished for different reasons. And you mentioned that four digits of Social Security. I wonder.

I mean when I arrived here as an employee of State Department as a Peace Corps instructor, I was given the Social Security number and then I still use that, but I was not a citizen. So four digits of Social Security is not the proof of citizenship. You have a citizenship.

So how can we just trust the four digits of. I don't know current law of issuing Social Security whether they require citizenship. I don't think so because they're. I think initial reason was that to make sure whether the person is entitled to be Social Security beneficiary after having worked over 10 years. How much money have you contributed?

I think that is how much money the person has paid tax. I think that's a primary reason. But in that process I don't think citizenship is the requirement. But I don't know currently whether they change the law or not. From my experience, the Social Security was issued to the workers so that I can pay the tax.

So how can we really make sure that the requirement, are you a US Citizen? Check mark and you process. You said you verify all different forms. But I would like to ask the Secretary of State, Dr. Weber do you, what method or do you. Two questions.

Number one is do you verify if I check are you a citizen? Yes. Do you verify I am a citizen? If the answer is yes, then how do you verify? That is the second question. So I think this is very critical. And the second issue of identifying who you are that you are telling me who you are.

So you are not voting for that person or you are voting for somebody who moved out and did the vote. Role integrity issue is another huge, huge issue. And then one of my bills, SB 408 that specifically deals with that rather than the registry of voters rather than sending out the voter postcard saying that, please reply.

We are trying to verify if you are still alive. You should still live there. So my Bill was to contract with the Postal Service because average person typically will register with a change of address through Postal Service, US Postal Service for $1 I believe so to get my mail or Social Security check or whatever.

I think typically faithfully they do register with the Postal Service for your change of address.

So I thought that there was a very one of the very efficient and effective and current correct method of verifying whether the person is receiving by receiving that coordination the application of a change of address that can be purged and integrated and updated record. And you mentioned that you are doing it weekly and monthly.

And my Bill was exactly the same as you have mentioned.

Dr. Choi, do you have a question for our panelists today?

Yeah, I'm asking that question.

I just want to redirect question.

Okay. Let me try to keep my train of thought. So I raised a question. Right now the Bill is in the Assembly Appropriation Committee and the chairperson called me how much it will cost. And at that time I said to my staff's analysis, less than 500,000. And later I verified this less than 800,000.

And many counties are already doing that, some counties. So it may not be burden to everybody. And then I think that can be very minimal and the county can observe because that the contract fee with the Postal Service will be not so exorbitantly too expensive is minuscule. I think that is a very efficient way of processing.

In other words, updating the voter roll. And I don't know. I tried to convince that Chairwoman to pass out so that we will maintain that the voter role through by contracting with U.S. Postal Service. So what you are mentioning is that you are already doing it. So Bill may not be necessary.

I wonder if you can clarify whether all the counties are asked to contract with the Postal Service or only certain counties are doing. So among many of the things, since I'm under pressure of the Chair to focus on the questions. So let me start with that question.

I think you know, and you can probably handle it as well or more than I can.

So two issues of the citizenship issue and contracting with the Postal Service.

If we're, if you know, if we're going to have to respond to a Bill that you've written and I have not seen the Bill, so I can't tell you whether it's going what it's going to cost, whether it's to going a half a million or 500,000 or whatever it is because obviously, you know, those who are on Appropriations and those in our office as well who evaluate bills based on cost factors often have to look at a whole lot of things that you don't see and I don't see directly in terms of what it costs us to process those issues and what happens at each area that's there.

Yeah.

I think in the conversation was a discussion of when we get an application for a person to. To get to vote. There's a whole lot of other information that is found even in Social Security that we don't have that they have that Social Security does.

When they begin to evaluate what they see more than just the numbers themselves. Is this the same number? But there are other things in terms of the persons who have applied for Social Security and who've applied to get a Social Security card. There's a lot of information that's contained there as well as with DMV.

So there's a lot of information that's there that it's more than just a number, more than just the name and that's the verification that goes on. But Trish was talking about that. That's part of the process that we're involved.

Yeah. Let me clarify my question. You don't have to know, read my Bill. But let me just simply ask. So my Bill may not be necessary.

If your answer is yes, our state whether mandates all the counties to use the postal service the address file and the coordinating with the cleanup of the voter roles and if answer is yes then I would not care whether that Bill comes out of the operations Committee or not because you are already doing it.

Or if your answer is only partially voluntarily counties are doing it then might be will be worthwhile.

Would the speaker like to respond?

The answer is yes. The counties not only receive the data from the electronic files that VoteCal sends down to us to do. We also receive data from our local post offices. And we can choose to either get that electronically.

Every county?

Yes.

Or with the little yellow Nixie stickers with the return mail. In my county we receive it both electronically and with the physical piece of mail. And I'm not, and so all the counties all 58 counties receive NCOA data from the post office and NCOA data from the Secretary of State.

If you're already doing that I'm so happy to hear that. So maybe I can even kill them. And let me go back to the first issue of verifying the citizenship but at the time of voter registration. I wish just like DMV requires a fiscal appearance for many different verifications.

Applying for driver license so why not we can verify either passport or birth certificate at the time of voter registration rather than leaving it up to the person's integrity whether person's lying or not lying. Nobody to my belief is that the secretary would not check the validity of my answer.

Whether the answer is yes, I am a citizen. Am I really the citizen? I mean because so far what I'm hearing is that the most reliable digit is four digits of Social Security, which is not the proof of the citizenship. So is there any justification what I'm saying?

And in the future, for the first time, voter registrars registers should present the proof of citizenship.

So, if I'm understanding your question correctly, it kind of relates to why I was my question of what is the voter ID for? So, it sounds like your wish is that the voter ID would be to prove citizenship.

Exactly.

Not identity.

Exactly.

Okay, so under the current law structure, that is, that is, that is not what is possible. And that goes to my logistics thing that if the law changes and people need to register to vote in person.

That is already law.

No, no, no, no, no. Please listen to what I'm saying.

If we could allow the speaker to...

If it changes to say that you can only register to vote in person, which is what I'm understanding you to say, we would need to go through a process to understand what that is, what exactly people would bring to us, and what would happen if they brought something different.

And so, it would eliminate vote by mail—or voter registration by mail.

It would eliminate online voter registration, it would eliminate updates such as what you were just saying with NCOA, you know, changes of address, it would eliminate all of that and require people only to register to vote in person at any time they make any changes to whether they're changing their address or becoming a first time registrant.

To your knowledge, what methods would you think that would be true verification of the person as a citizen or not?

I would assume that it would mean, and again, I don't make the laws so I can't tell, but I would assume it would be that there would need to be a birth certificate. There would be—or a naturalization certificate, or that there would be a passport.

It would lead me to concerns if it's a birth certificate because I will tell you right now, my birth certificate says a different name than what my identity is right now, so, how you would connect the dots to do that? What equals certified? Is it on the bond paper? Does it have a raised seal?

What if the only thing you have, you know, there is a lot that would have to be there to administratively do that.

Yeah. This nation's current law is to be a citizen to vote. That is an important, one of the few conditions to vote. That's a very important privilege being a citizen to be able to vote, participate in the democracy process. So, that to me, among other many things, they are all important, but the most important thing is because we are the country of immigrants.

So, how many citizens are the living people in the US are citizens or non-citizens? I have no idea the percentage, half and half? But the voting law requires thy shall be a citizen. So, I think that is already required.

So, I think we need to follow the law, and we need to come up with a verification process. So, just like a diem driver's license, why when for the first time application for the first time voters to present one of the three forms that you are mentioning.

And Dr. Choi, you know we do have another panel when—titled when something does go wrong, so perhaps we could also get into that then. I'd like to ask a question, Ms. Weber, that you had mentioned regarding the voter maintenance file. What sort of communication from the voter's family does your office follow up on?

So, we'll get returned mail. You know, like if we send out a voter guide or a notification postcard or just something like that, we'll get it back. You know, mom will come in and say, oh, Trisha is now down at school and, and she's not here or she moved, or she did this or whatever.

So, then what we will do is we, as much as I would want to take mom's word for it, I don't. I send out a notice to Trisha at the address that was provided by mom, and I get verification from Tricia specifically—"yes, I have moved, and I wish to cancel my registration."

Or no, I'm only know at XYZ college for two years, so I want to change this to be my mailing address because I'm not staying here. Because you know, college students can, can retain their California address while they're, they're at school. You know, so that's how we would do it.

We would, we would never, we would inactivate the record, but we would not cancel it until we do all of the things we're required to do.

Thank you for your response on that. And again, you know, I just want to thank you both for walking the public through what California does to identify voters, whether that's through voter registration, requiring proof of identity and eligibility.

You walked us through all the existing safeguards in place from signature verification and cross checking against the California Department of Public Health death records, as well as CDCR records, and mentioning that this is a 24 hours, 365 day a year voter maintenance file. Very extensive.

We also heard from you directly that election fraud is extremely rare and, in those instances, it is investigated and prosecuted. And so, thank you for walking us through that and that data as well, Dr. Weber. Again, California does verify voter identification.

I remember when I was only in my twenties when I used to register people to vote and walking them through that form and getting their driver's license number or the last four of their social, where they were born, if it was outside California.

And so, you know, that affidavit where people sign and then they receive a letter in the mail confirming that they were registered to vote. So, it is a very thorough system that we have in California. And just appreciate your testimony today on this matter.

I know given the interest of time, we have a few other panels to go, want to just make sure, turning to my colleagues, before we close it out. You're good?

Senator Allen.

Well, just, we apologize.

We were, we were both at a related event, actually, and, but we'll, we'll be following up further and just appreciate you and all your leadership, Madam Secretary.

Yeah, thank you, both. But that, that concludes our first panelist. Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go ahead and move to our second panel. We will have—we have Ms. Owens and Mr. Becker. Ms. Hubler.

Owens is fine.

Sorry. Please begin when you are ready.

Hi. Thank you, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. I appreciate being here today. I'm Katie Owens-Hubler. I'm the Director of the Elections and Redistricting Program at the National Conference of State Legislatures, or NCSL. And I'm here to talk a little bit about a national perspective on voter ID.

I will try to move quickly. You do already have the slides in your packet, so I'll try to speed this up a little bit. First, just quickly a little bit about NCSL. We are the nation's bipartisan organization representing you all, the legislatures and legislative staff of the country. One way that we do that is through policy research.

So, my team, we investigate elections, administration, and also redistricting. We also cover campaign finance ethics, ballot measures, a variety of other topics. So, that's what I'll focus on today.

We do encourage everyone to attend our other opportunities, though we do conduct trainings, meetings throughout the year, other opportunities to connect with legislators and legislative staff throughout the country.

And we also are the state's legislative voices in DC. So, on the topic of voter ID in particular, I'm just going to provide a little bit of history and sort of the current state of affairs on this topic in the states. We track more than 3,000 related bills to election administration every year.

And we also kind of have a database that goes back historically. Our current database goes back to 2011. We can go back all the way to 2001. And we have tracked bills throughout time, so I'll provide a little bit of history on that. The first bit is that voter ID is not new in this country.

And again, we're talking about that voter identification at the point of voting at the polling location. South Carolina was the first state to have a voter ID requirement. That was in 1950. It was followed by a number of states in the 1970s as well. It's important to note here that there was a mix of—it wasn't necessarily photo ID like we think of it today. It could have been various ways of providing ID in those states.

That number grew a bit by 2000. 14 states requested ID. I want to highlight the word requested here as opposed to required, so that was requested at the polling location.

But there were often other opportunities to provide identity that wasn't necessarily that identification card document. And also, that those states had both Democratic and Republican majorities. We saw it become much hotter of a topic in election legislation in the 2000s.

There was a commission on federal election reform, it's sometimes known as the Carter Baker Commission because it was co-chaired by President Carter who was a Democrat and former Secretary of State Baker, who is a Republican. And in 2005, they made a bipartisan recommendation for voter identification at the polls.

So, that, in some ways, contributed to the expansion of some of this legislation that we saw in the 2000s. And then, in 2005, we saw the first incidents of what we classify as strict voter ID requirements, and I'll talk about what that consists of in a moment. But Georgia and Indiana sort of pioneered this.

They actually required the ID to be presented at the polls, rather than requesting it. And if a voter didn't have an ID at the polling location, they were able to continue cast a provisional ballot that's sometimes thought of as a failsafe ballot, and then the voter would need to return with identification.

Those laws were quickly challenged but were eventually given the go ahead after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Crawford v. Marion in 2008. Just quickly, going back to 2011, and again, the bills that we've tracked on this topic, over time you'll see that there was a peak in 2012.

And so, that was really when a lot of this conversation occurred was back leading up to that time frame. And we had 18 enactments in the states. The top line there is the number of introductions. The bottom line is the number of enactments. We've seen another jump in both introductions and enactments this, in 20—well, there was a valley in 2024 and a jump again in 2025.

Something to note on here is that there's a lot of variation in these types of legislation, so it's not like these are all introducing voter ID for the first time. A lot of them are tweaking the identification that's included.

So, onto sort of how we classify things as strict photo, strict non photo—non-strict photo—and I'll talk about exactly what that means in just a moment. This slide is just showing how that composition has changed over time.

One thing to note here, this doesn't add up to 50, if anybody's doing math, it actually adds up to 51 because we include DC in this. So, into 2000, I mentioned 14 states have voter ID and those others did not at that point. And then we saw that increase over time.

But again, that composition has changed over time. Sorry, and I should highlight the number. So, we are a total of 36 states have some type of voter ID required at the polls right now. And these are those 36 states. Again, those variations in strict, non-strict photo or not photo.

And then, those that are the lighter green, which includes California, no document is required to vote. But as we've heard from Secretary Weber and as we'll hear a little bit more, that doesn't mean that there's not a verification occurring, that just means a document is not asked for at the polling place.

So, how we define these, the non-strict, strict, and photo versus photo. I'll start with the photo versus non photo because that's a little bit more intuitive. A photo has—it's an identification with a photo on it.

So, usually we're talking a driver's license, a state ID, it could be a military ID, travel—tribal ID—passport, in some states, a student ID if it has a photo and often dates associated with it. Non-photo are other types of identification that have the voter's name and address usually.

So, that could be a bank statement, it could be a utility statement. So, there's a lot of variations in those in what is acceptable in states.

The distinction we make between strict and non-strict, in strict states, voters that appear at the polls without that identification vote on a provisional ballot and must take additional steps afterwards to then have that ballot counted.

Most likely they have to come back into the election office before the end of the canvassing period before the election is certified and present that identification at that point, whereas states that are classified as non-strict, there are other options for them as they cast their ballot.

Could be an affidavit, could be even someone at the polling location vouching for them that they know this person, they know that they live in that jurisdiction. And so, there's sort of a way that they can do that without providing additional information after the election. And then, we've heard a bit about this already, but there are, in those states that don't require identification, be presented at the polling place. There are voter verification methods in these states.

It's typically an affidavit, could be signature verification. There is still a process by which that information is checked. So, the voter is still signing something.

Maybe they're providing some biographical information, either verbally or in writing at the polls that is saying, this is my address, this is who I am. They're signing something that verifies that fact. So, that is still occurring. Something that we're seeing recently, this is kind of a newer phenomenon is digital IDs.

So, I live in Colorado, for example, and we have an app where my Colorado identification is available on the app. And so, there are a handful of states that have explicitly said in statute that that can be used for voting. There are also a couple of states that have explicitly said that cannot be used for voting.

And it's a conversation in many, many states as well as we're seeing more and more of these digital IDs available. A few costs and considerations. This was discussed a bit in the previous panel.

And when it comes to California specific, the California Secretary of State's Office and local officials are in a much better position to be able to answer some of these. So, these are just some general considerations about possibly implementing voter ID requirements and things we've seen in other states. There's, of course, an aspect of educating the public.

If they haven't had to typically provide this in the past, knowing that they do need to now provide this. There's also revising election materials. That's everything from signage at polling places to poll worker training materials, possibly vote by mail envelopes, all the sort of materials that are involved with an election. Technology was briefly mentioned.

So, electronic poll books, some of them do have the capability to scan driver's licenses, for example, so it's not a necessity, but could assist with verifying IDs at the point of voting.

There are also undoubtedly additional provisional ballots whenever a new voter ID requirement is considered, because if someone doesn't have the required identification at the polls, they have the ability to cast that provisional ballot. So, there's some additional printing costs there, training your poll workers on what acceptable IDs are and what to do if those are not presented.

And then, the biggest one, and I think we'll hear this in subsequent panels, so I won't talk about this too much, but just ensuring that everyone does have those ID cards, if those are verified—if those are required—and this is more of if you're acquiring the photo ID, if you're requiring driver's licenses or state identification card, ensuring that the population has access to those and that the population has access to those for free.

Courts in the past have been receptive to the argument that a fee for identification cards used for voting is a form of a poll tax. And so, states that have implemented this in the past have typically made free IDs available.

So, what that costs and what portion of the population might need access to that varies a lot from state to state. And then, another aspect of the costs is potential litigation. There have been quite a few states that have experienced this pretty soon.

So, if there are voter ID requirements put in place, what may be the cost of defending the state law in court? And so, I'll touch on these just briefly. Some of the major court cases, Crawford v. Marion County is one of the bigger ones with voter ID laws.

And one aspect of that is kind of balancing the burdens versus the state interest in passing this sort of legislation. And again, I think we'll hear about some of these a little bit later on, so I'll move kind of quickly through these. I believe Mr. Becker will also discuss the verifying absentee ballots aspect of this.

Or in a state like California where you're mailing ballots out to all active registered voters, there are methods of verifying absentee ballots. This is usually done by signature verification in states that have a lot of this. But there are a few other states that have alternative methods.

And I think we'll hear about that a little bit more in a moment. And just one touch on voter confidence. One thing that you hear sometimes is that voter identification requirements increases confidence in the election. And there have been some studies on that. I'll note again here some of the language here.

The MIT report specifically looks at strict voter ID laws and found that there wasn't really a correlation between the adoption of strict ID laws and increase in voter confidence. If anything, the political climate created by debates about strict ID laws could actually be reducing confidence.

And I cite this particular report because the MIT Election Data and Science Lab has consistently done research about voter confidence and what creates and sort of flourishes voter confidence. And then another report from Pew.

They say that there is substantial support in both parties for acquiring a photo ID to vote, but there is a partisan divide in these views. So, the share of Democrats supporting this has risen from 61 to 69% since last year. So, this report was done in '24 and support for voter ID requirements remains nearly universal among Republicans.

So, just that sort of tie to the confidence issue as well. So, with that, Madam Chair, thank you, and I'll turn it to Mr. Becker.

Thank you. Mr. Becker.

All right. Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Vice Chair and Members, for inviting me here to testify on the important issue of verifying voters' identities. I'm David Becker, the Executive Director and Founder of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation Research, based in Washington.

We work with election officials all over the country of both parties to support elections that voters should and do trust. I should also mention I'm a Californian. I'm a double Berkeley grad. I previously served as a Chief DOJ Voting Rights Attorney. So, thank you very much for the opportunity to come back to my home state.

The issue of identity verification can often become highly politicized, but I've worked with the professionals who run our elections for over 25 years, and almost all will tell you, regardless of their party, that they want a system where every voter is verifiable, but also where no eligible voter could be disenfranchised.

The idea of a single fraudulent ballot or a single disenfranchised voter are equally troubling to them. Election officials, law enforcement, and academic studies all confirm that voter fraud, and in particular, voter impersonation fraud, are extremely rare in all states, including California, as we've heard from Secretary Weber.

And as you all know, and as we've heard, California, and indeed every state, already has processes in place to verify the identity of voters, from federally required ID to register pursuant to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, to processes to confirm the identity of voters at the polling place or confirm the identity of those returning mail ballots.

That said, several states across the political spectrum have sought to strengthen these provisions, and there are several examples where states have developed systems that meet the dual goals of ensuring integrity while preserving access for all eligible voters. Let's start with mail ballot verification, since that's how the majority of Californians cast their ballots.

Several states have innovated to make mail ballot verification more accurate and more efficient. Georgia, for instance, requires a driver's license number or state ID number on their return mail ballots. If the voter has neither, they can give the last four digits of their social security number.

In Georgia, almost all voters, 99.4%, have either a state ID or social security number in their voter file. Minnesota, similarly, requires a driver's license, state ID, or social security number. Virginia requires the last four digits of the social security number plus the year of birth.

Importantly, if the voter ID number isn't on file, as is the case, sometimes, to varying degrees in the states, or if a voter fails to include the identification numbers, which happens occasionally but somewhat rarely, or if a match proves difficult, these states all have fail safes, such as signature match, to allow for ballots to be counted and ensure that no ballot that should be counted goes uncounted.

These states have generally found that such methods reduce the amount of time it takes to verify mail ballots while maintaining or enhancing their ability to confirm the identity of the voter.

Some counties are experimenting further with King County, Washington, piloting a pre-verification process where voters can go online and submit their ID number and have their identity verified before election officials even receive the ballot. These innovations have been enormously popular, with large bipartisan majorities expressing support.

91.5% of those that used King County's new pre-verification said they'd use it again, for instance.

But as Clerk Weber mentioned, states that implemented these changes required a redesign of their ballot return envelope to allow ID numbers to be protected from disclosure to anyone other than an election official, usually by creating a flap that covers the information to be opened only by election officials.

With regard to in person voting, the options for secure, non-disenfranchising voter ID have been tested over decades. The most common and successful form of voter ID implemented in states have been those that have that offer an affidavit alternative for eligible voters, as Ms. Owens-Hubler mentioned, in those rare cases where they don't have or can't get the requisite ID.

States as diverse as Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, South Dakota, and Virginia require some form of ID when a voter casts a ballot, but if they don't have an ID at the time they vote, the voter can fill out an affidavit with identifying information and an oath under penalty of perjury and cast a regular ballot.

This enables states to ensure that no eligible voters are disenfranchised while also preventing those rare cases of voter impersonation fraud and providing an evidentiary base to investigate potential cases.

The Idaho Secretary of State reported that only 0.2% of all voters in 2024 used an affidavit and further confirms that, "There are no known instances of voters misrepresenting themselves on an affidavit." Michigan found a similar rate of 0.2% affidavits used in the 2020 election. You'll note that this group of states spans the political spectrum.

It's true that there are efforts to implement extremely restrictive voter ID laws in some states, which could disenfranchise some eligible voters who lack ID.

But if California decides to amend its voter identification laws, other states have demonstrated there are ways to do it without disenfranchising eligible voters, and in the case of mail ballots, perhaps building efficiencies that could result in faster, more accurate counting of ballots. Thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you both for your time. I will start here with a question for Mr. Becker.

So, given that there is debate over voter ID laws that, you know, can erode trust by suggesting widespread problems that just don't exist, you know, particularly those registered as Republicans, their lack of confidence in our elections, you know, what would you recommend that California can do to address those rising concerns?

Yeah, I think Ms. Weber really made this point very well earlier. I think it's important to separate facts and reality from perception, especially perception that might be fed by disinformation. And we've seen a lot of that now. For instance, there's a lot of disinformation about the prevalence of non-citizens registering and voting in the United States.

We know the reality of this. In fact, my organization, the Center for Election Innovation Research, has put out a study on this in the last month, and it was reported on NPR, where we looked at what the states had actually reported finding in terms of noncitizens registering and voting.

And even states that were aligned with President Trump, for instance, who had reported numbers such as in the thousands of potential noncitizens during the campaign, once the campaign was over and they had to actually refer prosecutions, they found far fewer.

Texas, for instance, said they found 6,000 possible cases in the summer of 2024, but in the summer of 2025, referred only 33 cases of possible noncitizens voting to further investigate in a state that has well into the eight figures of voters overall. So, we know that voter fraud is extremely rare.

The instances of voter fraud are not zero, but they are close to zero. We know that the states are doing a remarkably good job and right now, our elections are a secure from fraud as they've ever been, thanks to a variety of things that the Federal Government and the states have done.

That said, if there are efficiencies that can be built, and we heard from Clerk Weber, I think it was a really good point, if ID can be used to improve the check in process, for instance, and provide some sense of security to voters, then that could be something that was considered.

As long as—I know that again, from the election official perspective, as long as no eligible voter could be potentially disenfranchised from some hoops that they have to jump through unnecessarily.

Thank you. And then, if I could turn to you for a question, other than birth certificates and naturalization documents in states that are strict, how is citizenship confirmed?

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. And I want to make a distinction between we're not really talking about citizens citizenship here. We're talking about the identity verification step of this. So, there's a couple of different aspects of how states are looking at verifying qualifications that usually occurs at the voter registration stage.

And so, what we're talking about with providing documentation at the polling location is more about identity verification. So, in most cases, those individuals are already registered, their address is already listed in the poll book. It's verifying that identity information at the polling location.

So, again, voter registration, and Secretary Weber mentioned this, that aspect of it is a very important part of this, and that's where the first verification occurs. There are also verifications—that voter list maintenance piece that's happening constantly is another aspect where there's a continual sort of verification of qualifications of individuals.

So, when we're talking voter identification at the polling locations, really, we're just talking identity verification then.

Senator Allen.

Yeah. Well, I guess my question for you, Mr. Becker, is, you know, given all of this, all this data about the lack of problems, why do you think this continues to be an issue politically?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, certainly there are those who believe that by amplifying false claims about alleged problems with our election system, they might achieve some kind of political advantage.

Those of us who work in elections have often been frustrated by the voter fraud versus voter suppression dynamic, which are often used kind of in a political way during campaigns to supposedly generate interest in campaigns. I know what Ms. Owens-Hubler and I do is we try to get the actual facts out there.

And I think Secretary Weber mentioned that even the Heritage Foundation, which has been collecting data on voter fraud since 1980, they have—we're talking about nearly 50 years of data—and the total number, the maximum number, including cases that are things like campaign finance violations, is somewhere around 1,000 out of billions of ballots cast during that time.

So, we're talking about an incredibly rare problem which really speaks so well of our professionals who run elections and of the American voter who takes this very seriously. You can imagine from a non-citizen's perspective, the risk reward is really out of balance for noncitizens trying to vote. That's why we see it so rarely.

They are risking deportation and jail for the right to cast one additional ballot in an election in which 160 million ballots are going to be cast. It just doesn't make any sense.

Dr. Choi.

Thank you. I think I have two different aspects of a question. First of all, as you all know, just about everywhere you go you are asked to present your ID, right? Any company to enter, especially airlines. And last Monday, when I came up here, I had to present my driver's license real ID.

It has to be real ID now required. So, it's—we take it for granted, and nobody attempts to fly without their identification, especially driver license. It could be passport, I guess.

But why, in general sense, I guess Republican versus Democrats, Democratic Members, they seem to be more offended and dislike identification of voter ID and under the name of voter suppression, photo intimidation, things like that. And there are so many numerous states you illustrated that they do require some form of—different form types of photo IDs.

So, that is my current status of my assessment. And the second question issue, related to Huntington Beach, is I think very well known by many people, to many people, that they passed their ordinance in the City of Huntington Beach a photo ID shall be required.

And then, our state, I think District Attorney DTA or Secretary of State, I don't know who initiated sued the city and to my understanding 2-3 times, the court ruled in favor of the city. They do have a right to require photo ID, and I think the state sued them again.

And then, to my understanding is the last suit is still decision is pending. And if you know anything about the result and your opinion, why voter ID requirement—and one of my bills was exactly to leave that decision by county by county.

If we can focus and redirect the question to the...

I am so frustrated by chairperson trying to intervene my question when I'm asking important question.

Well, if we could allow the speakers to answer the questions.

This hearing is about the discussion of these issues' dialogue.

We're not here to discuss other bills. We're here to discuss voter identification.

I mean, we are talking about...

Keep the questions focused to panelists...

...of identification. What else am I speaking about right now?

So, would you like the speakers to answer your questions? We could do so at this point in time. Mr. Becker.

I mean, I'll just say briefly on the Huntington Beach situation, although I am, I'm a California bard attorney, I am I'm going to leave that to the people who work on that and let the courts run their course.

There's been—there have been a lot of litigation in the election space over the last five years in particular and I think although the Democrats win some, the Republicans win some, I think the courts have generally done a pretty good job in most cases on those, so, I trust the court system.

I think your—I think your analogy about the airline ID is a really important one because it demonstrates the need for fail safes. Traveling on a plane is not a fundamental constitutional right, unlike voting, but, and you might be aware, you don't actually need ID to get onto a plane.

You don't actually even need real ID to get onto a plane right now. There are fail safes for those few people who don't have ID where they go through a secondary process, and if they don't have a real ID, they go through a secondary process where they can still fly.

And the goal here, especially with a fundamental right, I think, should appropriately be if there is a need, if there's some benefit that you're going to gain from some particular policy here, voter ID, is there a way to implement it in such a way that it won't unnecessarily place a barrier in front of those who are otherwise eligible?

Because although it might be easy for many of us to have ID, I have ID, I'm fortunate enough in the sense that my birth certificate matches my name.

But what states have found, for instance, when it comes to proof of citizenship, that a lot of the people that they're not sure about their citizenship status, they ended up being naturalized citizens who often registered to vote at their naturalization ceremonies.

But the DMV data hadn't yet caught up to that, the federal data hadn't yet caught up to that. And so, their citizenship was questioned when they had done exactly what we would hope everyone would do when they come to this country.

They'd gone through all the steps, they had taken their oath, and as they left that ceremony, they registered to vote. So, trying to figure out ways that any potential barrier wouldn't unnecessarily impact eligible voters, I think is important here. And I think, for instance, flying is a good example of how they've done that.

So, do I take it your answer is a voter identification requirement is intimidation of voters to vote?

No, I didn't say that.

I think, I think there is.

It is unnecessary?

I think, if—I think where states have found that they wanted to implement some kind of photo ID requirement, and again, I go back to what Clerk Weber said, and she is incredibly knowledgeable on this. She's been—I've known her for some time.

She's been working in elections for some time. And the professionals who work on elections at the local level, at the county level, are the most important people in this conversation. If there's a way that that ID can help speed up check in, can make it easier for poll workers, that could be a benefit that would be reasonable.

The question is what happens in those rare cases, and it will be rare, where someone doesn't have an ID but they're nevertheless eligible, is there a backup process? Is there a failsafe to make sure that they can vote regardless?

Because while concern about those extremely rare cases of fraud is legitimate, it's also legitimate to be concerned about those extremely rare cases where eligible voters are somehow prevented from having their ballot counted.

Now, I'm not talking about only 12 or 12 million non-registered voters were found to be guilty of voter fraud. I mean, I would take it so because of that, the low statistics, 0.02%, only voter fraud cases have been identified. But there's a simple answer. So, because of that low data, to your opinion, who does all that?

The research, the photo identification requirement is unnecessary. Do you support or not?

It entirely, it depends on what the actual bill says.

No question. What do you mean not depending? It's all general. It's the same thing.

If everyone is required to have a certain type of identification and those that don't have that identification, regardless of their eligibility, would be prevented from voting, I think that's potentially a big problem. If there's a way to make sure that those eligible can vote, even if they have some—I mean, I think back, again, I've been doing this for a very long time.

There were stories that came out of Louisiana when they passed a voter ID requirement that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there were people whose entire lives documents were washed away and destroyed and their ability to document their identity and their citizenship was gone.

It would have been very troubling if those people would not have had a path towards being able to express their preference in our democracy. There are people who face barriers that I, fortunately, have never faced. And I think that's why having some kind of backup procedure, some kind of failsafe is important.

So, depending upon how states implement it, some states have implemented very restrictive ID. I think that can be problematic. Other states have found ways to make sure no eligible voter gets disenfranchised, and I think those approaches are better.

Yes, specific cases like Louisiana, it may be a special case, but we are talking about California, and you illustrated that airlines is a private, it's not government. And other than a real ID or drafted license, second form of ID verification, we can do the same thing, at the ballot box when people show up.

Oh, I didn't bring mine, then they can set it aside and go through secondary method just like airline does. So, I think a general idea question is a photo ID requirement is unnecessary because of such a law.

Identified voter fraud or will it be to increase the people's trust in our voter integrity? Would it be a good idea and leave it to each county for them to decide? That was the essence of my Bill.

I'm not asking you to review my Bill, but I'm talking about your opinion based upon your years of research on that voter integrity, election integrity.

So, I will allow, of course, either of the speakers to respond if they like, and then I'll close it out here before we move to the next panel.

I'll just say briefly, I think that the, the data is very clear that voter fraud, particularly voter impersonation fraud, is extremely rare. I can't even tell you a single case of in person voter impersonation fraud that I know of off the top of my head.

I won't say it, it doesn't exist, but I don't know of one off the top of my head. It's very, very rare, and so, crafting a policy that would prevent those extremely rare cases could very well be legitimate, but should also be balanced to the rarity of this, to make sure it doesn't accidentally sweep in eligible voters.

Thank you.

Thank you both for being here today and just sharing some of the—what other states are doing as it relates to voter identification. I think it was very insightful and just some of my takeaways, you know, these misperceptions about fraud, you know, I believe are fueled by national political rhetoric than by actual data and facts.

And so, thank you just for being here and sharing again what other states are doing as it relates to this. Appreciate your time. Let's go ahead and move to our third panelist. We do have Devin Lovell, who is the Assistant Director of the California Research Bureau for the California State Library.

We also want to hear from Jessica Washington, who is the Deputy District Attorney for Sonoma County. Please begin when you're ready. Ms. Lovell, if you'd like to go first. Mr. Lovell, if you'd like to go first, excuse me. Grab that. Thank you.

All right. Good morning. My name is Devin Lovell. I'm the Assistant Director of the California Research Bureau. The Research Bureau provides independent, nonpartisan research at the request of the Governor, the Legislature, and their staffs. Most of our work is confidentially provided to our individual members.

The Committee requested that we provide a review of evidence of voter fraud in California beginning with the 2020 election cycle, and I've been asked to summarize those results quickly.

This includes a literature review, which developed a major focus on grand jury reports, as well as academic studies and analysis in the advocacy space, a legal review of cases that could be identified through public databases, and a review of media claims related to voter fraud. More details about the methodologies involved available in the Appendix.

And I will begin. Oops, let them go. All right, great. I will begin with our literature review. Grand jury reports were a major source of information on California specific research. CRB identified 14 counties that have conducted grand jury reviews during the period we reviewed.

We also identified a similar number of additional counties where grand juries reviewed narrower aspects of elections but not wholesale voter fraud. The grand juries followed similar methodologies. These often involved stakeholder interviews, reviewing relevant procedural and training documentation, observing various processes of conducting the election as they happen, and sometimes included analysis of voter rolls.

In summary, none of the 14 found any evidence of voter fraud and all were very positive in their reviews. This is not to suggest the processes were perfect.

Nearly all noted potential areas for improvement, for example ensuring accurate voter roll roll roles, improving formal procedures, trainings and or their documentation, improving facilities, increasing transparency and improving communication with voters and their in person experience.

One interesting recommendation from Sutter County advocate for ongoing public education efforts to dispel misinformation surrounding the electoral process prompting trust and confidence in the integrity of elections and another from Fresno county the Board of Supervisors should recognize the importance of maintaining the the commendable integrity of the Fresno county voting process by providing the resources requested by the registrar voters during the 202223 budget process.

I should make a note of a Merced county grand jury report as well, which did not address fraud directly, so it's omitted from the sample, but it focused on outright errors made by the county related to district boundaries resulting in thousands of eligible voters receiving incorrect ballots. This was the only report that wasn't very positive.

Academia does not offer a significant amount of research specifically on voter fraud within the sample we're looking at. I would speculate that it considers this largely settled issue with limited new evidence to warrant additional investigation. There does not appear to be more recent study on various.

Sorry, excuse me, There does appear to be more recent study on various issues related to the perceptions of voter fraud. We identified a handful of relevant studies. However, Grimmer, Groffman, and Eggers each worked through statistical claims of voter fraud and other analyses related to the 2020 election, identifying various statistical shortcomings that they saw.

With that work, Chao uses statistical analysis to argue for the need for improved voter database monitoring and auditing, especially related to counties with high costs per election voter. High election cost per voter. Excuse me, those are typically the smaller counties. And finally, Norris surveyed election experts on their perception of integrity, which rejected claims of widespread voter fraud.

Democratic line respondents were modestly more positive, but Republican respondents on average also rated the overall integrity as 9.0 I believe is 9.2 on a 10.0 scale. The accuracy of the electoral register received relatively low scores, however, with only 79% agreeing it was accurate.

In addition, respondents expressed concern about the influence of money and the media on election integrity. As mentioned on the prior slide, there have been. Oops, I got A. Sorry, got 2 as mentioned on the prior slide, there have been many statistical analyses by conservative linked individuals and organizations related to questioning the integrity of recent elections.

Young and Keshel are among these and are highlighted here because they include specific information about California. They follow similar methodologies modeling expected results in 2020 based on changes in voter registration from prior elections. Both estimated Biden overperforming significantly.

Neither appear to account for shifting voter turnout trends over this period or changes in the two party vote share the Transparency foundation surveyed voters with rejected ballots, which remain uncured. The sample included 17,715 voters whose ballots were not cured. Of those, 388 responded to their survey 14.17%, 55 in total did not recall casting the vote.

While the large majority confirmed that they did cast the vote, the report did not include the survey questions or specific responses. So it's unclear if they considered various issues that could have led to such a response, including memory issues, the amount of time that it elapsed, or making the response based on knowing their vote did not count.

Oddly, despite their own experience with a very low response rate to the survey, they note that the low response rate to county attempts to cure as potential evidence to fraud. Finally, the Election Integrity Project California analyzed Vote Cal data and identified perceived anomalies in voter histories, registration status, registration changes.

This appears to be similar to issues raised by the Riverside Grand Jury Report. Next we'll move to the legal review, which includes two components. The Heritage foundation, which you've heard a lot about, has a very helpful database of voter fraud cases. It includes 69 cases in California, most of which were before 2020.

10 of these entries were from the 202021 or 22 elections. There are no entries yet for 2024. The 10 entries cover six unique schemes. Four involve local candidates fraudulently registering voters to support their campaign. Three were initially successful but subsequently overturned.

The other two cases involved an individual deliberately casting a single fraudulent vote, one on behalf of her deceased mother and a second vote second voting both in person and by mail. In both of these cases, the fraudulent vote was detected and rejected prior to being counted.

In addition to validating the cases identified in the Heritage foundation database, we conducted a review of online legal databases These included searches of key terms such as voter voting fraud, multiple times registration and more than once induce promise, gift or loan in various combinations. These terms are based on statute language noted in the Appendix.

Several based on we searched also searched based on 7 excuse me, 11 key election code sections and by shepardizing for those key sections in as well One limitation is that these databases do not include criminal cases that were resolved in the Superior Courts. Searching Superior Court records is generally impractical and impossible.

Within the timeframe of this project, this review identified four additional cases of potential interest. Two resulted in conviction, both related to candidates registering and running in districts where they did not actually reside. A third was a complaint related to a candidate giving out tacos near a voting center. The fourth was related to an individual with murky nativity.

Both of these were resolved in favor of the defendant and we have not yet but plan to share the additional cases with the Heritage foundation for potential inclusion moving forward as well.

And then finally our media review to both find any cases that may have been missed through the legal review or identify specific allegations that may not have been followed up on, our media review independently found each of the cases identified by the Heritage foundation, which confirms that these cases generally do receive press coverage.

In addition, we identified three of the four additional cases CRB found through its legal review. The immigration case did not appear to receive any news coverage, perhaps not surprising since it's only tangentially related to voter fraud. The straightforward voter fraud cases, however, appear to consistently be covered and findable in the media.

We identified four clearly identified examples of coverage of specific allegations of voter fraud. In the City of Livingston, a candidate claimed to have been promised votes by a Member of the council and his police officer brother if he cooperated with them. This was investigated, but no resolution was identified. The Council Member did not run for reelection.

In Escondido, a thief stole a number of mail in ballots. The stolen mail was found in a car and the individuals involved were reissued new ballots. The Riverside Sheriff investigated a number of issues of suspected voter fraud, but did not make the results public. Others accused the sheriff himself of voter intimidation through these tactics.

And finally, the California GOP may have crossed the line in legal ballot activities with their drop boxes in 2020, which resulted in a cease and desist order. Complaints about Democratic ballot harvesting efforts similar to this happened before the in the elections, before what was covered by this analysis. So that's why they don't show up here.

And then finally, the bulk of what is in the media are stories with complaints of fraud or potential fraud, but that did not cite specific occurrences. Many of these are a broad belief in fraud, such as Trump's complaints in the Garcia Speth, excuse me, Garcia Smith special or Elders complaints in the recall.

Others, such as the Judicial Watch complaints, focus more on specific issues that they believe create the potential for fraud without necessarily claiming actual fraud. And that concludes the presentation. If time allows, I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that thorough literature review, Ms. Washington.

Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair and Committee Members. My name is Jessica Washington. I'm a Deputy District Attorney with Sonoma County District Attorney's Office, and I'm here today to talk to you about one of the cases of voter fraud that our office investigated and prosecuted. In 2024, we received a referral from the Sonoma County Register of Voters.

And to preface this, I should say that the voter fraud statute that we were focused on in this investigation was Elections code Section 18560, subdivision B, which, which in summary states that it's a misdemeanor or a felony and a crime if you vote more than once, attempt to vote more than once, or knowingly hand in two or more ballots folded together at an election.

And so that was the law that I was focused on in this particular investigation.

What occurred was a Sonoma County citizen discovered a post on the social media platform X, which was formerly known as Twitter, where another Sonoma County citizen, a 77 year old man by the name of William Eschenbach, bragged about voting twice in two separate elections and was never caught.

He believed he had proved his point that mail in voting is insecure because he never heard a word from election officials or officers. His post in January 2024, which I will read for you, says Lonmusk. I'm a scientist. I'd heard mail in voting was insecure and while I believed it, I had no evidence.

So when California went to mass mail in voting, I decided to try an experiment. They said I could vote by mail and I could vote in person. So I did both in each of the last two elections. Never heard a word back. And yes, I know it's a crime, so sue me.

I proved that mail in is insecure, which was my intention. We had a secure system. We need to return to in person voting one day. No machines, ID required. Finally, Lon Musk, thanks endlessly for buying X and setting the caged birds free. A huge contribution to humanity.

After receiving this referral from the registrar's office, my investigator, District Attorney investigator, did a Little research on Mr. Eschenbach determined that he had also made some posts on other social media, social media platforms like Facebook. He had his own website where he had written a couple articles about how voter fraud is very easy to commit.

And subsequently, he obtained records from the Registrar of Voters, their election management system, which showed that Mr. Eschenbach, initially, for both the 2022 primary election and for the 2022 General election, he voted by mail, first sent those in, and then on election Day, went and voted in person.

What we Learned was that Mr. Eschenbach's first received ballot was accepted, which was the vote in person, and that any other ballots that were issued to him, which was the vote by mail, was voided. It was kept by the register of voters in storage, was never even opened because it was voided when he voted in person.

Our investigator interviewed Mr. Eschenbach, who admitted to voting twice in the elections. He said he purposely voted twice to, quote, prove what kind of garbage system we have. And he said he knew it was illegal to vote more than once in an election, and he put it out extensively on social media.

To expose the potential fraud in the current voting process, I charged him with two felony counts of voter fraud. He was arraigned in May of 2024, and not even a month later, he pled guilty to one count of voter fraud.

Our office issued a press release with a joint statement from the District Attorney and the Registrar of Voters with the purpose of deterring other voters from engaging in such experiments and to undo his attempt to undermine the integrity of the election system.

Thank you both, and thank you for sharing that very important example of what one individual did and how they were held accountable and prosecuted. I know in the interest of time, we do have questions, but I think we'll follow up afterwards. But really appreciate the time today on this panel.

I do want to move to our last panelist, if we could have our next panel join us. But thank you both for being here. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Chair. Madam Chair. I'm going to go to caucus. Certainly. I'll be listening in. My staff's going to be.

Yes, no. Thank you, Senator Allen. So we will bring up our last panel. For recommendations on changing voter identification practices, we have Colleen Britton, who is the Solano County Coordinator volunteer for Election Integrity Project California.

We also will hear from Conrad Kremp, who is a senior health policy advocate for Disability Rights, and Rosalind Gold, who is the Chief public policy Officer for Naleo Educational Funding. Welcome to the Committee and please begin when you are ready.

Thank you.

Ms. Britton, thank you.

Let me figure out the clicker here. Election Integrity Project California EIPCA is an all volunteer California nonpartisan, non profit organization committed to advocate for an election system that is trustworthy for all California citizens. Since 2010, EIPCA has recruited and trained thousands of citizens in 43 of California's 58 counties.

They trained to observe the election process at the polls, at vote centers, and during the entire ballot processing operation. Over the years, our data team and researchers have reviewed countless voter rolls, election laws and observer reports. EIPCA's impeccable findings and evidence have been successfully presented in court cases reaching all the way to the Supreme Court.

After 14 years of documentation and research, EIPCA has almost endless statistics to prove that many changes must be made in California's election process if it is to once again be honest, transparent and trusted by the electorate. Today's topic addresses one of these concerns Voter ID.

We continually are told that our elections have never been more secure and accurate. To believe that statement and continue down that path will lead to a disaster. Our trained EIPCA volunteer observers and researchers work with their nonpartisan eyes open, looking for possible cracks in the system which are opportunities for manipulation in the process.

Claims that there is no evidence of election fraud are unfounded because much of the irrefutable evidence that EIPCA has submitted has never been examined by those in authority. We offer you a sample of that evidence today.

EIPCA research has proven that votecal, California's HAVA required statewide voter database, has been unreliable since its onset in 2016 and that unreliability is a major reason that photo voter ID should be a priority throughout the election process. VoteCal recorded almost 124,000 more votes than voters in the in as voting in the 2020 presidential election.

A Review of Voter list of Voters the number of votes cast in the November 22 election reveals 43,624 more votes and over 22,000 more voters than numbers certified by the California Secretary of State. These figures call into question the validity of the certification of the 2022 election.

Bloated voter rolls, mass ballot mailing and ballot harvesting enables impersonation to occur. Currently, a person can check in at the polls, use a name of another person who hasn't voted yet, give that name and address to the poll Clerk, obtain a ballot and submit it without ever proving any, providing any form of identification.

Signatures at the polls are never checked and photo ID would stop this impersonation at the polls. 20 years ago we were warned that Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud. Yet nearly 90% of Californians now vote via mail in ballot.

A person can complete voter registration online without a Social Security number or a driver's license and still receive a vote by mail ballot. Current efforts to accurately match the voter to the envelope are tedious, subjective and ineffective. A rigorous method of providing voter ID along with every mail in ballot is desperately needed.

In the November 22 election, 21,300355 voters had two or three votes credited to their respective registration ID numbers. An effective voter ID process for vote by mail ballots could have prevented this. What is an effective voter ID should include only government issued photo IDs? There are several voter ID laws must have teeth.

If you go to the polls without it, you go home and get it. Proof of citizenship before you can register to vote is essential. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld Indiana's voter ID law in 2008 and there have been several similar rulings since then.

Allegations of voter suppression due to required voter ID have been definitively debunked and must not be part of any legitimate debate on the subject. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, analysis have shown that voter ID laws have no negligible effect on registration or turnout over for any group defined by race, gender, age or party affiliation.

Studies by the Heritage foundation echoed those results and noted that Hispanic voter turnout actually increased in states with voter ID requirements. 84% of Americans across the country overwhelmingly support all voters showing photo voter ID in order to vote. It's time for California to implement a strong voter photo voter ID requirement. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you Mr. Crump.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Conrad Kremp and I serve as the Senior Policy Advocate with Disability Rights California, affectionately known as drc, where we work to advance and protect the interests of Californians with disabilities.

DRC really takes perspective of opposing laws and policies that make it harder for people with disabilities to vote and and have access to civic engagement. Equitable access I might add. Now, the title of our panel actually suggests that we should be recommending changes to California's voter ID laws.

And while that may sound simple when you look at how stricter voter ID requirements could play out, we actually realize that this could really be a detriment, especially for people with disabilities, communities of color and low income Californians.

The picture becomes a little bit more complicated than what a lot of the other folks might be alluding to and it's deeply concerning. Now you've already heard compelling testimony that voter fraud is actually quite rare. So I won't repeat those points.

But I do want to underscore that California does have multiple safeguards in place to verify voters identity and eligibility. Now the real problem isn't fraud fraud. The real problem is access. The data is clear.

Voter ID laws disproportionately impact, you know, people of color, people who already face systemic barriers, individuals with disabilities, and it comes at a great cost to them. You know, people with disabilities and the like, you know, they have real challenges in obtaining and renewing government IDs as it is.

You know, what might seem, seem like a small policy change can easily turn into an obstacle that blocks their access to the ballot. Now here's what creating stricter voter ID requirements actually looks like in real time. A young woman who uses a wheelchair told me that she couldn't get to the DMV easily. She takes paratransit now.

If these new ID rules came in, she'd face weeks of delays just to update some paperwork. Another individual, a blind voter, shared with me that the hardest of part part isn't actually casting her ballot. It's actually navigating systems designed without accessibility in mind. Adding new ID rules would only, you know, exacerbate that process and that problem.

And lastly, I'll never forget a young man named Ronnie who has an invisible disability. He works, pays taxes, civically engaged, you know, he doesn't drive, but he does. And he doesn't have a government ID. However, under current law, his signature is enough.

Now, if we change the rules, even he'd be left out even though he's fully eligible as a United States citizen. You know, and as a personal point, just to wrap it all up, because I know we're pressed for time, a while back, I had the privilege of meeting Myrlie Evers, who was the wife of Medgar Evers.

Medgar Evers, you know, who many may or may not know gave his life for voting rights. That moment actually stayed with me because it was a reminder that the right to vote isn't guaranteed. It was fought and paid for with the blood of people who actually believed that every voice matters.

Now, when we talk about changing voter ID laws, we need to remember that history. Medgar Evers didn't die so we can make voting harder. He died so we can make it fair.

So in the spirit of Medgar and Merlie Evers and the generations of folks who fought to make voting a right for everyone, I urge this Committee to keep our current voter ID processes in place. We honor the legacy not by creating new barriers, but by protecting every Californian's equal access to the ballot. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Gold.

Chair Cervantes and your colleagues. Thank you so much. I'm Rosalind Gold, Chief Public Policy Officer of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the NALEO Educational Fund, and I very much appreciate to deliver this testimony on behalf of the organization.

The NALEO Educational Fund is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization and our constituency includes the more than 7000 Latino elected and appointed officials nationwide, including about 1800 who are Californians. We have extensive experience working directly with Latino voters to engage in non partisan voter mobilization and we also provide information to voters through our 188 vei vota bilingual Hotline.

In addition, we have conducted extensive research on a wide variety of California election policies. Well, based on our experience with Latino voters and the research we've done, we strongly oppose any efforts to impose more restrictive voter identification requirements on Californians than those in that exist in current law.

So when I say restrictive voter ID, I'm talking about anything more restrictive than what California is doing now. And although my comments are going to focus on voter identification because the issue of documentary proof of citizenship has been raised, many of my comments are also applicable to the challenges with voters obtaining documentary proof of citizenship.

We oppose restrictive voter ID because it is unnecessary. It will detrimentally impair and discriminate the ability of voters of color to cast ballots and young voters and low income voters.

And finally, it will impose significant costs on counties and other local officials at a time when they have much more pressing needs to serve their communities during these fiscal crises some are facing.

First of all, again, I'm not going to go over the extensive research that shows that voter fraud is rare and voter fraud in terms of impersonating another voter is exceedingly rare.

I'm just going to take a quote from some of the seminal research that the Brennan Center for justice did on this, which is it is more likely that a person will be struck by lightning than that person will impersonate another voter at the polls.

Additionally, research shows that many Americans eligible to vote lack the identific required by restrictive voter ID requirements and again, particularly persons of color and young voters.

You know, the Brennan Center for justice, together with the University of Maryland and vote writers, conducted a survey in 2023 of a nationally representative sample of voting age citizens asking them about access to different forms of identification and documentary proof of citizenship.

And nationally they found that blacks and Latinos were less likely to have access to a driver's license with a current address and current information on it, 28% of blacks, 27% of Latinos compared to 18% of Non Hispanic whites.

And then looking at data specifically for California on access to driver's licenses, the Brennan center and Boatriders research found for Californians, 15% of Latinos and 11% of Asian American Pacific Islander voting age citizens lacked driver's licenses compared to only 5% of Hispanic whites. Non Hispanic Whites, excuse me.

So the discriminatory impact of voter ID requirements is particularly of concern in California because the turnout rates of people of color tend to lag historically between those of non Hispanic whites. And the ID requirements would make these disparities worse.

If we look at the November 2024 election, there is data that shows that 74% of non Hispanic whites who are eligible to vote voting age citizens cast ballot compared to only 64% of blacks, 58% of Asians and 55% of Latinos. So California needs to take action to close these gaps and not make these disparities work.

Finally, restrictive voter ID requirements will impose costs on localities at a time when they have very pressing needs to meet their communities. To meet the pressing needs of their communities, they will likely need to retrain. Poll workers. They will likely need to reprint or redesign vote by mail materials.

They may have to change their processing approaches and even their processing technology. And again, this is all unnecessary considering what we know about how rare voter fraud is. In summary, restrictive voter ID requirements are a very bad solution in search of a non existent problem. And this is not something our state and counties can afford.

You know, California has been a leader in making our election process more accessible to all of its voters. We instituted online voter registration, we modernized voting at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and we enacted the Voter Choice Act.

But if we adopt restrictive voter ID requirements, the state would take a step backwards at a time when we continue to need to make our democracy more robust and strong.

Thank you, thank you to the three panelists today for your testimony on this issue. You know, I myself have experienced in elections that I've ran in where I've seen voter suppression activities on election Day, where we've seen observers, election observers challenging the signatures of predominantly Latino voters, regardless of their party ID.

And so there is more work that we have to do in our state and we need to ensure that we're making it easier and having more accessibility for all those eligible voters in this state. And so again, just want to thank each of you for being here and for Your testimony, I will move.

We're on a tight timing here, but we will have to now move to those who are in the room to provide public comment. We will. I will allow 30 seconds. For those who wish to provide public comment on this topic today, please step forward to the mic. This is your opportunity.

30 seconds. Wow. 30 seconds. Go ahead. 30 seconds. Please begin.

Okay. Carly Heaney. I'm from San Joaquin County. So there's some things to be be pointed out that was in the presentation that was left out by the people speaking. One of them is as Sherikhan down in San Joaquin county had 71 ballots that he turned in.

He's waiting to serve right now. And that got left off. So when you sit here and talk about stuff, you're giving one side. And it's interesting that nobody from the sheriff's Department of San Joaquin county was invited and how one sided everybody is at here. So who's doing suppression? You are.

Right. Morning. My name is Hugh Depanthena Kelly. I'm here from Sonoma county, representing Sonoma County's Election Integrity Committee. If there's no voter ID, the people who vote can't be tracked. So when the Heritage foundation does a check on fraud, it comes in as very low. Right. So we've heard a lot about the Heritage foundation results.

And if there's no voter ID, where's the fraud? It's not to be caught. Same with the voter registration rolls. In 23-24, 1.2 million people were legally removed from the California voter ID roles. Okay. If those people are on the system. Right. That provides openings for those people's votes to be used because they haven't been removed.

So we do need voter ID. We do need to clean up the voter rolls. And federal law largely states to vote in the country of the United States of America, you have to be a citizen. There needs to be very, very strict regulation on when you vote for the first time.

Thank you. Our next witness, please show that proof. Thank you.

I think there's something missing. I'm 68. Pardon me, 86. Let's reverse that. I want to be 68. I feel there's huge suppression and there's a lot missed here. My county, I live in Sacramento, they vote on a contract of who the voting and tabulating corporations are going to be. Corporation will be.

The one that we have is a closed system. It cannot be investigated. You talk about suppression. Suppression is when your supervisors vote for a voting and tabulating corporation that can make winners and losers out of an election. If you cannot.

If we cannot the people investigate those voting and tabulating corporations, then there needs to be a law against those who are proprietary and those who will not allow us to investigate them. That should be in the record. Thank you.

Thank you. Next witness.

Not sure if it's morning or afternoon at this point, but. Rhonda Provost, Sonoma County. We have voters, votes and counts. The system has gotten way more complicated than it needs to be. I think where I applaud that we place so much attention on giving voters access.

My growing concern is that we're not protecting the ballot, and voter ID is a big part of that. The California Constitution, Article 2, Section 2.5, says a voter who casts a vote states that a voter who casts a vote in an election is guaranteed to have that vote counted.

Article two, Section one says all political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require. Clearly, it needs improvement. The system needs improvement. When you put good people in bad systems, you get bad outcomes.

Voter integrity is a nonpartisan issue. 65 to 70% of voters don't have confidence in our elections anymore. You don't have confidence in your elections. You don't have a country anymore. And so the single best example of voter suppression is lack of competence in your elections. Thank you for affording us the opportunity to even say these things.

Thank you for your testimony. Are there any others in the audience wishing to provide public testimony? Public comment? Okay. Seeing none. I'd like to just again thank all the individuals involved today that were with us all the past for taking time out of your busy schedules and for your valuable information that you provided to the Committee.

If there's anything more you'd like to provide to the Committee, please reach out to our staff and we'll be happy to follow up as well. And I know that our colleagues, my colleagues on the Committee, would probably follow up individually. That does conclude the agenda today. The Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments is adjourned.