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California this jump volition begin automatically registering adults who obtain or renew a driver'southward license to vote, leading to some concern non-citizens and immigrants illegally living in the state could find it easier to cast ballots in elections.

State officials are disputing those claims, however, and say safeguards in identify will prevent non-citizens from voting.

The issue involves the latest implementation of the California Motor Voter Human action, which beginning in Apr will ship information about drivers to state voter rolls unless the license holder opts out, or is not eligible. The automatic registration component of the process has some concerned about potential fraud.

Y'all're setting the country up for a disaster. They don't seem to take a process in identify to verify that people are who they say they are.

— Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote

"Y'all're setting the state up for a disaster. They don't seem to have a procedure in place to verify that people are who they say they are. It'due south a free-for-all, a process that can be manipulated," said Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a national organization that unsuccessfully pressed Gov. Jerry Brown to veto the law assuasive automatic registration.

A California official pushed dorsum against those concerns, telling Fox News those who must use for or renew a special license classification – the AB 60, named after the bill that gave illegals the right to apply for licenses in 2015 - would exist excluded from the voter notification procedure.

"The driver license awarding program prevents undocumented Californians from being able to register to vote," said Jessica Gonzalez, Assistant Deputy Director of the DMV. "Automatic programming will non let them become to the (voter) registration section. It will exist automatically grayed out and can't be bypassed. It will require proof of U.Southward. citizenship and California residency."

Critics of the automatic registration process say they remain skeptical about the ability of the country to keep ineligible people off the registration rolls. Old California State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a former vice chairman of the Committee on Elections, says the country by and large does an inadequate job of scrutinizing voter registration.

California Gov. Jerry Brown.

California Gov. Jerry Brown. (AP, File)

"Dissimilar agencies in California don't effectively communicate with each other," Donnelly told Fox News. "Cracks exist in the system.

The DMV is probably sincere in trying to do its job … When we were debating AB60 when I was in the legislature, they said the (AB 60) license wouldn't be able to exist used for federal purposes, and they are being used to board aircrafts."

Linda Paine, co-founder of the nonpartisan Election Integrity Project of California, said her organization has visited DMV offices to discover how workers handle undocumented immigrants. She said the visits, and meetings with country officials, left her with little conviction about any safeguards to prevent illegal voter registration.

"There are thousands and thousands of DMV workers across our huge state," Paine told Pull a fast one on News. "They're non all trained … Information technology'southward not even that people who are ineligible want to exist registered. They may not know that they have to select 'Opt out.'"

Gonzalez maintained DMV employees "go through rigorous grooming" to ensure that documents establishing citizenship and legal residency are valid. Nigh one one thousand thousand of the AB 60 licenses have been issued since the constabulary was passed in 2015.

Others argue voter fraud concerns are overblown. Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Crusade, or CCC, a nonpartisan voting rights advancement group, expressed confidence the new registration procedure would not open up the door to widespread fraud.

"There's a real interest [by all parties] in making sure that there are articulate signals when people are filling out a DMV course," Feng told Fox News. "They're asked if they're eighteen, if they're U.S. citizens. They don't move on to the voter registration if they're not eligible."

Feng argued about immigrants would not want to run a risk their chances of legalizing their status or, in the case of people who accept a green menu, becoming naturalized. "My aunt was not a U.S. citizen for many years, and there was nothing she would practise that would jeopardize her status here."

CCC was one of several organizations that filed a federal lawsuit against the DMV last twelvemonth, saying it made information technology difficult for people to annals to vote by non making it part of the application to renew or obtain licenses.

EDITOR'S Notation: This story was updated on Wednesday, Jan. 24 to include new information from the California DMV, clarifying details of the agency's implementation of the California Motor Voter Human action.

Elizabeth Llorente is Senior Reporter for FoxNews.com, and can exist reached at Elizabeth.Llorente@Foxnews.com. Follow her on Twitter @Liz_Llorente