New ID System May Block Voters

Voter information is checked against records with the federal government and state motor vehicles department. Under an agreement negotiated by McPherson and the U.S. Justice Department, California is one of nine states that use the standard of an "exact match," in which the records must be the same to the letter, according to a national survey by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit group in New York City. Thus, "Robert Smith" and "Rob Smith" would not be considered a match.

Ashley Snee Giovannettone, spokeswoman for McPherson, who oversees elections, said a sampling of statewide registrations found that 74% were immediately verified. She said state election law requires county officials to resolve the discrepancies for the others, which might mean fixing a typo or contacting the voter to obtain missing information.

"We are working with all the 58 county registrars to ensure that all of the eligible voters are able to cast their ballots on election day," she said.

McPherson's office plans to launch a campaign in April to educate Californians about the new registration rules. But some county officials are urging him to ease the rules so that, barring suspicion of fraud, technicalities don't remove a voter from election rolls.

"If we aren't able to put them on a list with some sort of a pending status, they wouldn't get a sample ballot or know where to vote," said Deborah Seiler, Solano County's elections manager.

State Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), who chairs the Senate elections committee and is running in the Democratic primary to challenge McPherson, said: "We're looking at the potential for thousands and thousands of people to lose the right to vote."

McPherson's office said that even after the election, counties have 28 days to check provisional ballots and fix flawed registrations.

McCormack said that of 34,064 registration forms Los Angeles County residents sent to the database in the first 2 1/2 months of the year, 4.7% were rejected because of a database system error, such as an interrupted transmission. She said that at least 7% more contained all the required information but were rejected because a name or birth date did not exactly match state records. Among other reasons for rejection was failure to provide the identification number.

Elaine Ginnold, Alameda County's acting registrar of voters, said she doubts her county will be able to ratify all rejected registrations submitted near the deadline.

"These are errors that are not the fault of the voters and not related to voters' eligibility," said Wendy Weiser, a deputy director at the Brennan Center. "They should not prevent voters from being able to cast votes that count."