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SALT LAKE CITY — Utahns need a gold star on their driver’s license, but not everyone has received their new card in the mail.
Officials are in the process of putting gold stars on driver’s licenses and mailing them to residents but are still having trouble getting the correct address for everyone.
You’ll need the new license if you want to fly anywhere after October 1, 2020. Or if you need to go into a federal building or courthouse, or get onto a military base.
In October, state officials said they had 50,000 licenses with incorrect addresses. Now that number has grown.
“A little over 76,000 licenses are in our possession that we haven’t been able to find an updated address for,” said Chris Caras, director of the Utah Driver License Division.
“As of today, we’ve sent out more than 1.4 million replacement cards,” Caras said. “About 100,000 were returned because of incorrect addresses. Proper addresses have been found for 24,000 of them so far.”
The problem exists because people moved and did not update their address with the Driver License Division (DLD). They may have done so with the Division of Motor Vehicles, for example, but state agencies don’t share those addresses.
A new federal law requires the gold star on your driver’s license so that officials can tell at a glance if you are a US citizen or legal resident.
Related from Oct. 2019:
You have 1 year to get your gold star driver’s license
You may have heard a while ago that you’ll soon need a driver’s license with a gold star to do things like board an airplane. You now have exactly one year until that deadline.Driver License Division officials said they have been able to return approximately 1,100 licenses a month for drivers that have updated the address online.
Caras recently told KSL NewsRadio that he worries about people who may take an airplane trip before the deadline.
“And October 2nd or 3rd [2020], you’re trying to get home. If you do not have that gold star on your [license], it’s going to be a problem. You will not be allowed to get access to the aircraft,” he said.
Is my gold star license on the way?
You can update your address at dld.utah.gov or use that site to see if your new card is on the way.
