The Colorado Department of Revenue said Friday evening that 158 of 524, or about 30 percent, of drivers licenses mistakenly sent to immigrants living in the United States illegally have been returned.
Last week, the department said a software glitch was responsible for the mistake. The 524 licenses did not have a black band near the top indicating that the license does not offer voting privileges and is not for “public benefit purposes.”
“They didn’t have all the security measures they were supposed to have to make sure they were used correctly,” Daria Serna, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Revenue, said at the time.
The licenses were produced by private contractor MorphoTrust.
E-mail notices were sent to those who received the defective driver’s license. MorphoTrust will provide gift cards to compensate those who received the invalid driver’s licenses.
In an email sent Friday evening, Serna said the department, “continue to actively work to get all cards retrieved as quickly as possible.”
The bad IDs were the latest snafu for the program, which was developed following the 2013 passage of a law by the state legislature. The bill created a new category of driver’s licenses that would be marked to ensure the state’s compliance with federal guidelines, and making the license invalid for boarding an airplane, entering federal buildings or for voting.
Since the law went into effect on Aug. 1, however, there have been numerous glitches, including an underestimation of how many people would seek the ID cards.
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292, acotton@denverpost.com or twitter.com/anthonycottondp
