DMV Archives - California Political Review

Mysterious ‘anomalies’ could mean thousands lose their California driver’s licenses

July 9, 2026 By Clara Harter Leave a Comment

The California DMV has warned about 11,000 drivers that “testing anomalies” could void their written exams.
Those notified must retake the test within 30 days or risk losing their licenses.

Thousands of California drivers have received letters from the Department of Motor Vehicles informing them that irregularities were found in their written test results and that they will lose their licenses unless they retake the exam within 30 days.

The letters have left many Californians scratching their heads as to what went wrong and scrambling to reschedule their tests to ensure they don’t lose the ability to drive.

“It’s a major headache for people who maybe don’t have reliable transportation,” Sacramento resident David Specht said. “A single parent raising a kid, they have to take time off work, they have to get child care. It just seems like if that’s our system, it isn’t really working for us.”

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A spokesperson for the DMV wrote in an email that the agency had “identified anomalies in the results of certain knowledge tests” and that as a result about 11,000 people are being notified that they must retake the exam.

The spokesperson said the letters were a result of the DMV’s regular internal monitoring process, and did not respond to questions on the nature of the irregularities detected — such as whether they were suspected to be evidence of cheating or the result of internal technical problems.

“Ensuring the integrity of our testing process is essential,” the spokesperson stated. “Knowledge tests play a critical role in confirming that drivers understand the rules of the road before they are licensed to drive in California.”

Specht, 36, said he took the written test in January after relocating to Sacramento from Chicago. He was then very confused when he received the warning letter last month and initially thought the DMV suspected him of cheating because he had completed the test very quickly.

The letter states that the irregularities detected indicate “non-compliance with the drivers testing criteria required by the California Vehicle Code” and that, as a result, the license was issued in error.

“Then I thought more and more about it, and I googled some of the language from the letter, and I stumbled upon a number of Reddit posts, and social media posts in general, where there were quite a few people questioning it, saying, ‘I did not cheat, I don’t know why I got this,’” Specht said.

Specht said he called the DMV and asked for further details on what issues were detected with his test, but the representative did not know.

“Maybe they’re using some new AI to flag questionable exam results and maybe the AI is not working as intended,” Specht speculated. “It’s just causing an inconvenience for these 11,000 people.”

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced that the state had entered into a new partnership with Anthropic to expand the use of the AI assistant Claude within government agencies. The announcement noted that the DMV is already using Claude to improve customer service and reduce wait times.

The DMV has not commented on whether the recent warning letters have any connection to its use of AI tools.

The letters appeared to have been sent to residents in various areas of the state, with drivers reporting on Reddit that they had been asked to retake the test in San Francisco, Sacramento and Santa Monica.

People are instructed to scan a QR link on the letter that will lead them to a list of available appointments to reschedule their test.

Affected drivers are told to bring a copy of the letter to the appointment as well as their instruction permit, temporary driver’s license or driver’s license card. Should they fail to retake the test within a month of receiving the letter, or fail the test upon retaking it, their license will be revoked.

Sam Burgin, 35, said that when he scanned the QR code on his letter he could not get an appointment at his local DMV office in San Francisco and therefore had to schedule one at the San Mateo location.

Click here to read the full article in the Los Angeles Times

California Legislature in standoff with DMV over sharing driver license data with other states

June 14, 2026 By Khari Johnson and Wendy Fry 1 Comment

The California Legislature wants to stall plans to share information about California drivers — including more than 1 million immigrant license holders who lack federal authorization to live in the U.S. — with a little-known nonprofit agency made up of motor vehicle administrators across the nation.

The Assembly and Senate’s budget agreement, released Thursday night, withholds $55 million in funding for the California Department of Motor Vehicles to link to a database that would begin fulfilling requests for information from other states about California drivers early next year.

The governor’s office and DMV want to share that information with the State-to-State system and SPEX platform, which lets states check for duplicate licenses and is operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

Because the system records the last five digits of a driver’s Social Security number and uses a placeholder such as “99999” for people without one, opponents of the plan warned it could easily flag drivers who lack a Social Security number.

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Immigrant advocates worry the upload could leave undocumented Californians vulnerable to deportation if the information goes to Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Californians are eligible to obtain a standard driver’s license regardless of their immigration status under a 2014 law known as Assembly Bill 60.

State officials say the data sharing is needed to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005, which sets requirements for accepting state identification at federal facilities such as airports.

In response to the Legislature’s budget proposal, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson encouraged people who lack federal authorization to live in the U.S. to leave the country.

The Senate released its budget proposal Tuesday evening, and the funding for the DMV’s State-to-State Verification program was not included. The Legislature must adopt a budget by June 15 but has until June 30 to negotiate budget details with the governor.

Leaving out the $55 million from the state budget would not completely kill the DMV’s plan, advocates said. Budget negotiations between the two houses and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office could continue. Lawmakers could still revive the appropriation through follow-up budget legislation or a separate budget bill.

But it could mean the DMV is unlikely to receive the funding by July 1, the date it had targeted to begin sharing the data, according to Jessie Schmitte, a state policy manager with Alliance San Diego, a community-based human rights organization, which has been tracking the proposal. Nearly 200 organizations signed on to a letter by the coalition in opposition to the DMV data sharing plan. The data sharing plan also attracted protestors to a San Francisco branch of the DMV earlier this month.

Some advocates credited CalMatters with bringing the issue to light in a news story earlier this year.

“As you probably know, a lot of organizations weren’t aware of these conversations until, thankfully, the CalMatters article came out and brought air into this conversation for everybody who has not had a seat at the table,” said Schmitte. “If you were really serious about protecting Californians and doubling down on privacy concerns, you wouldn’t be running away from these conversations.”

Click here to read the full article at CalMatters

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California DMV, California legislature, DMV

Brown Leaves Newsom a Managerial Mess at DMV

January 8, 2019 By Dan Walters 5 Comments

Jerry Brown’s last days as governor have been filled with laudatory media accounts of his half-century-long political career.

Many of the plaudits were deserved. Some were not, such as claims that he single-handedly rescued California from the brink of a financial meltdown. Even he acknowledges that luck – eight years of unleavened economic expansion – played a big role in balancing a budget drowning in red ink.

Missing in the positive descriptions of Brown’s career was any mention of his penchant for shunning responsibility for shortcomings in the state government he managed for 16 years.

Infamously, he replied “shit happens” when asked about huge cost overruns and construction flaws in the project to replace a third of the San Francisco Bay Bridge – and that’s been pretty much his attitude on other problems.

He’s refused, for instance, to accept responsibility for whether a huge change in school finance he proposed and shepherded through the Legislature actually has its intended effect of improving the educations of poor and English-learner students.

In public statements, and even in responses to lawsuits, Brown has taken the attitude that having provided the extra money meant to help those kids, he should not be held responsible for whether it works.

Rather, he preaches a doctrine he calls “subsidiarity,” shifting the onus for what happens to local school officials – a handy rationalization since so far, the Local Control Funding Formula has not appeared to have much positive impact.

And then there’s the Department of Motor Vehicles, the state agency that Californians love to hate – with good reason.

The DMV and its director, career bureaucrat Jean Shiomoto, came under fire in the Legislature last year after revelations of hours-long waits at field offices for even the simplest of transactions.

The Legislature was on the verge of ordering State Auditor Elaine Howle to delve into the agency’s obvious managerial shortcomings when Brown intervened and privately persuaded members of the Legislature’s audit committee to back off. A critical report from Howle would have been a black mark on Brown’s gubernatorial legacy.

But no sooner had Brown dodged that bullet than it was revealed that the DMV had made many errors in automatically registering Californians to vote when they did business with the agency – errors so grievous that Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who oversees California’s election system, demanded a managerial overhaul.

It was embarrassing to Padilla and other Democratic politicians who had touted “motor voter” as a way of expanding voting in a state that has a very low participation level.

Late last year, Shiomoto saw the handwriting on the wall and announced her retirement. But then another DMV imbroglio surfaced.

The federal government had notified DMV in November that it was using a faulty process in implementing “Real ID” driver’s licenses, meant to defeat counterfeiting that would allow terrorists to board airliners.

California had already issued more than two million licenses or identification cards and the DMV claims – or hopes – that they will be honored even though the agency didn’t fully follow federal guidelines for confirming the identity of cardholders.

Beginning this year, DMV said, it will require applicants for Real ID to provide additional proof of legitimacy. Real ID will be required to board commercial aircraft in October 2020 and the agency was already way behind schedule on implementing the program.

The Real ID problem will fuel new efforts in the Legislature for a top-to-bottom audit of the agency’s managerial mess and how incoming Gov. Gavin Newsom deals with them will be revealing.

This article was originally published by CalMatters.org

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: DMV, Elaine Howle, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown

Rejection of Proposition 6 Doesn’t End the Taxpayer Revolt

November 19, 2018 By Jon Coupal 10 Comments

It is understandable that many California taxpayers are disappointed with the election results. The defeat of Proposition 6 means that last year’s big increases in both the car tax and the gas tax imposed on us by Sacramento politicians will remain in effect and California’s drivers are stuck having the second-highest gas tax in the nation.

Tax-and-spend progressives are interpreting the defeat of Prop. 6 as a green light to impose even higher taxes. In fact, some now believe that the iconic Proposition 13 itself may be vulnerable. But this thinking is faulty.

There are three major reasons why Proposition 6 failed and none of them are because voters were enamored with the Senate Bill 1 tax hike last year. First, the ballot label – which may have been the only thing low-information voters saw – made no reference to the tax hike passed by the legislature last year. Rather, it ominously stated that the initiative would “eliminate certain transportation funding.” This non-specific description ignores that, had Prop. 6 passed, California would still have the fifth-highest gas tax in the nation. In providing a blatantly misleading ballot title, Attorney General Xavier Becerra did the opponents a huge favor.

Second, the financial power of the “rent seekers” — those interests which secure financial advantage through higher taxes on the general public – was on full display during this campaign. Big business, including large construction companies, teamed with big labor to contribute well over $50 million in campaign funds. A one-time $50 million investment for $5 billion in tax proceeds every year is a heck of a good return on investment. Moreover, this amount of money dwarfed the approximately $5 million raised by the proponents. With that kind of spending disparity, the disinformation spewed out by the opponents could not be challenged effectively, particularly in major media markets.

Third, opponents engaged in repeated acts of questionable and even illegal behavior. Beyond just the over-the-top threats of collapsing bridges if Prop. 6 passed, there was the well-publicized use of Caltrans-supervised work crews to stop traffic and hand out campaign fliers urging a no vote on Proposition 6. And the full integration of Caltrans management with opposition campaign operatives was an example of real, not fake, collusion. While legal actions are pending on this kind of activity, it is of little solace to California drivers who are being punished every time they pull up to the pump or write a check to the DMV. …

To read the entire column, please click here.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: CalTrans, DMV, Gas tax, Prop. 6, Proposition 6, Xavier Becerra

Brown Leaves Newsom a Managerial Mess at DMV

Rejection of Proposition 6 Doesn’t End the Taxpayer Revolt

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