Registrar Responds To Claims San Diego Has More Registered Voters Than Are Eligible

. I am Michael Lipkin it is Friday, August 11. The top story, a conservative legal group is accusing the SANDAG County of not doing enough to keep track of who should be allowed to vote. The group judicial watch warned California that 11 counties had thousands more total registered voters than they had adults over the age of 18. They said San Diego County had the largest discrepancies. Alex Padilla tweeted that the group is using that math and wild methodology but judicial watch may sue to get more detailed voter data. Joining me is registrar of voters, Michael Vu . Welcome to the program.Thank you for having me.Judicial watch says there are 138% more registered voters intended go out again we have adults over 18. What is your response. Are they right?The way judicial watch puts together percentages the first time I've seen someone take this method in calculating how many voters are registered to have those that are eligible to registered. It is known that we use the active population of voters. This is how we determine things like voter turnout and the number of signatures required when circulating a petition. From this perspective, the last report that I showed that we reported showed us that 76% of the eligible abolition. What is troublesome with judicial watch's method is that they added a group our population known as the inactive voter to the active population. What is this population? Is a group of individuals that we are legally required to track. It is individuals where the status is unknown where we sent voters and undeliverable mail or we received a type of notification from the U.S. Postal Service that they violate the change of address or if they have not voted in the last four years. What we are legally entitled to do is send the voters once we receive undeliverable mail or a change of address notice, we will send the voter a portable card. It is called a confirmation card. We are trying to get an understanding as to what the status is and where they live. Again, this is portable. If they respond back to us, we will cancel them off the roles because they have moved or if they respond back because they have changed the address, if they do not respond, that is when we keep them on the inactive status. That population is what is in question but you are saying they have combined active voter registration count with urine inactive account and that is why they have a high number ?That is exactly right. We talk about list maintenance, San Diego does list maintenance. We do it on a daily basis. We do it meticulously in compliance with the national voter registration act as well with California law. In fact, we will soon set 103,000 voters a confirmation card so we can interact with them and let us know what the that is is and what the disposition is.You keep track of inactive voters in any given election say the last election?I do not know what that number is. What I can tell you is that the inactive voter population is a population as pursuant to the national voter's registration act. That is the federal act that Congress passed in 1993. It is almost a quarter of a century old that has been in place. What that is is to grant voters last opportunity to cast a ballot. It gives them the benefit of the doubt as well as safeguarding them. For example, if they -- up a Bellotti registering a foreman they forgot to fill out the apartment number and it comes back as undeliverable, should that person be canceled? Should they still have an opportunity to cast a ballot? Once we get the apartment number, we can count the ballot. It is to safeguard them as much as it is to give a last opportunity to vote.Up you fall on the inactive voter registration list, you are still allowed to cast a provisional ballot. What do you do to make sure that someone has not cast a vote somewhere else?There are a number of different things. Certainly, of course, there is the law. Inactive voters are casting a regular ballot. They are not casting a provisional ballot when they go to the polls. There is a couple of things. You cannot double vote. Any of those situations that we find, we will certainly refer to the proper legal authorities including the district attorney office, the Secretary of State and the end investigation committee as well as the FBI. What I can also say is that the list side of it is to try to interact with the statewide database and the local perspective databases to determine whether or not there is duplicates and remove those off the roles that President Trump has named unproven claims in voter fraud and he has launched a commission to look into that. Padilla has rejected this twice now and he said that judicial watch is letter is quote setting the stage for the Trump administration to rollback voter rights. You agree ?What I can say is that regardless of my opinions associated with the sexiest date as well as the new administration, San Diego County is abiding the national registration act. That was passed back in 1993 as well as California election code. That is our duty and responsibility come to retain the voter rolls.If judicial watch sent you a letter asking for your voter database, we share it? That what we will do is, we will review the request and at that point in time determine whether or not the information will be given.I've been speaking with Michael. Thank you.Thank you.