This came over the transom yesterday from Sen. Lou Correa's office:

Senator Lou Correa Welcomes New Voter Protection Law

SANTA ANA – State Senator Lou Correa today publicly thanked Governor Schwarzenegger for signing into law legislation to provide greater protection and notice for California voters when party registration is changed in a re-registration. The measure, which was supported by Senator Correa, is Assembly Bill 452, authored by Assemblymember Juan Arambula. The new law will require a voter notification card, which is required to be sent to all registered or re-registered voters, to include a notification that the card may have been sent due to a change in party affiliation.

The measure was written in response to incidents of voter registration fraud. In February 2006, Orange County elections officials found evidence of fraudulent registrations and by the end of March had received complaints from voters that their party affiliations had been changed to the Republican Party without their consent.  Of the voters interviewed, 84% said their registrations were switched without their consent. 

Senator Correa stated that he was personally aware of the attacks on his constituents, and had met with several dozen of these victims throughout his Senate campaign.  He added that “These fraudulent actions were not only criminal; they violated the fundamental rights of these voters to cast their ballots for the candidates of their choice.”

AB 452 also requires that the Secretary of State, in coordination with county elections officials, develop specific procedures to address complaints related to voter registration, including procedures to promptly re-register voters who believe their registration was changed improperly.

The measure will go into effect on January 1st of 2008.

Correa had been pushing his own bill (SB 812), which was written to outlaw the OC GOP's voter registration program that had helped put him through the race of his life (you can read earlier posts on the topic here and here). But during the summer (after passing out of state Senate) the the bill was gutted and turned into "alternative workweek schedules for pharmacists" legislation.

I don't why SB 812 was re-written, but Correa probably figured it was doomed to a Schwarzenegger veto -- not because Arnold is a staunch partisan so much as he's very close to The New Majority, which funds the OC GOP's central OC voter reg program.

AB 452 is a harmless piece of good government legislation, and unlike Correa's bill actually deals with unauthorized registration flipping. At the same time, readers should remember that the registration flipping came to light in part because the OC GOP sent follow up letters to the new registrants welcoming them to the party -- which alerted those who had been fraudulently re-registered to that fact.