Online voter registration.

Existing law prohibits any person from being registered as a voter except by affidavit of registration and requires that the affidavit be mailed or delivered to the county elections official. The Secretary of State has certain administrative duties under existing law in providing voter registration materials. The federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 provides for state departments of motor vehicles to make voter registration information and materials available to an applicant for a driver's license and other vehicular documents. Existing state law requires licensed persons to provide to the Department of Motor Vehicles a signature and the Department of Motor Vehicles is required to digitize that signature and forward the digitized signature to the Secretary of State if a person wishes to register to vote. Under existing law, operative when the Secretary of State certifies that the state has a statewide voter registration database that complies with the requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, a person who is qualified to register to vote and who has a valid California driver's license or state identification card is authorized to submit an affidavit of voter registration electronically on the Internet Web site of the Secretary of State. Under the above-described online voter registration provisions, the Secretary of State, for each electronic affiant, is required to obtain an electronic copy of the applicant's signature from his or her driver's license or state identification card directly from the Department of Motor Vehicles. This bill would require the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Secretary of State to develop a process and the infrastructure to allow electronic copies of the applicants' signatures and other information required under the above provisions that is in the possession of the department to be transferred to the Secretary of State and to the county election management systems to allow a person who is qualified to register to vote in California to register to vote under the above provisions. This bill would provide, as an alternative operative date, that the above provisions shall become operative on the date the Secretary of State either certifies that the state has a statewide voter registration database that complies with the requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 or executes a declaration stating that certain specified conditions have occurred. For purposes of implementing the above provisions as expeditiously as possible, if the provisions become operative under the latter, the Secretary of State's office would be exempt from certain provisions relating to information technology, as specified, in implementing the provisions.