It looks like a bid to repeal a Massachusetts law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses will make it on to the November ballot.
Republican grassroots organizers said last week they’d handed in petitions to city and town clerks with over 70,000 signatures for certification – comfortably more than the 40,120 the law requires to get a referendum on the November ballot.
The Secretary of State’s office still needs to verify the legality of the petitions and do a county-by-county tally because no more than a quarter of the signatures can come from one county.
Cecelia Calabrese of Agawam, an activist in the campaign to repeal the law, said people in the country illegally should not be able to get driver’s licenses.
“I think it should be up to the voters to decide if this law should stand,” she said.
Soliciting signatures on the petition in front of supermarkets, Calabrese said she found a lot of people eager to sign.
“People have come up to us and said ‘I have never been politically active, but this is an issue that speaks to my heart’,” Calabrese said. “People want to have the opportunity to vote on it.”
The law known as The Work and Family Mobility Act is scheduled to take effect in July 2023. It allows people to apply for a driver’s license by showing two forms of identity such as an unexpired foreign passport or certified copy of a birth certificate.
“The Registry of Motor Vehicles, I don’t think, is equipped to review the documentation that is required,” Calabrese said.
After different versions failed in previous legislative sessions, supporters finally succeeded in getting the law enacted in June when the Democratic legislature overrode the veto of Republican Governor Charlie Baker.
Although not an active participant in the repeal campaign, Baker said he supports it.
“We vetoed that because we felt there needed to be some provisions in there to make it relatively easy for city and town clerks and the Registry to separate those who wouldn’t be eligible to vote because they are not citizens from those who would be,” Baker said. He said amendments that were proposed to include the safeguards he sought were shot down on voice votes without debate.
“For that reason alone, the lieutenant governor (Karyn Polito, R-MA) and I are going to vote to repeal,” Baker said.
State Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, a Springfield Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, said the purpose of the law is to make Massachusetts’ streets safer.
“We’re willing to take that fight to the general public,” he said when asked by WAMC about the possible voter referendum.
Gonzalez said the law makes sure “that everybody that is on the street has the ability to have legal documentation and insurance to protect the general public.”
He said in the 13 other states that permit undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses there have been “no negative effects.”
The claim the law could lead to noncitizens registering to vote is a red herring, said Gonzalez.
“It hasn’t happened anywhere else, why would it happen in Massachusetts?” he said, adding that “we have all the protections in place” to make sure only those people legally eligible can vote.
A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll released in late July found 58 percent of the registered voters surveyed said they would vote to keep the law.
