Strong Support Among Notaries for the Remote Online Notaries Public Act

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Jan. 8, 2022 - PRLog -- The California League of Independent Notaries (CLIN)  is in strong support for AB 1093  the Remote Online Notaries Public bill that is currently making its way through the legislature. The bill is up for a hearing on January 13th with the Asm Judiciary Committee.  The bill would authorize remote online notarization for California notaries public, expanding access to notarial services for California residents.

RON is a convenient alternative to traditional in-person notarization for businesses and consumers, but it is especially beneficial to members of the public who are unable to easily  access notarial services. Some 38 states have passed remote online notarization in recent years beginning with the state of Virginia in 2012.  However, the California bill would be a first of it's kind due to it's very strong data privacy protections, immunity for notaries from industry bad actors and create a new notarial act which would enable notaries to certify a tangible copy of a digital record. "Ultimately this bill will set a new benchmark for the remote online notary experiment currently underway across the country", said Matt Miller, president of the CLIN.

The California state legislature has twice considered remote online notarization and twice rejected it due to data privacy concerns, the loss of critical notarial transactional records and the potentially harmful effects to the public of local notaries being driven out of business by large out of state corporate online notary platforms.

The bill was introduced last February by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer of the 59th district. In the spring Dr. Shirley Weber, the secretary of state held an informational briefing outlining the benefits and concerns of remote online notarization. While the convenience of virtual notarization is obvious, there were still many questions regarding the safety of the technology. It would seem that those concerns have been met in the newly amended version of the bill.