Innovations Gained Ortiz Respect of Peers--and a Probe by D.A.

As a boy growing up in the farm town of Sanger, Calif., Ray Ortiz was known as a “hustler,” the kind of guy who did what it took to get a job done.

Now Ortiz runs in different circles, but his rap hasn’t changed much. As registrar of voters in San Diego County, Ortiz is known by his colleagues nationwide as an “innovator.”

Ortiz once sent his top assistant up in a biplane over the beach, towing a red streamer that said: “REGISTER TO VOTE--Call 565-VOTE.” In 1981, Ortiz ran the nation’s largest-ever mail ballot election, a move that landed him in civil court yet also attracted praise, and imitators, from throughout the country. And the 51-year-old registrar has managed to attract scores of volunteers to help defray the costs of putting on elections.

But even Ortiz concedes that his knack for the unusual--and his belief that the private sector can do almost any job better, and cheaper, than the government--is probably what prompted a district attorney’s investigation of his office and the nearly $4 million in contracts awarded since Ortiz was hired to run the county’s elections in 1979.

Ortiz has taken an unpaid leave of absence from his $54,000-a-year job until the investigation is complete. He said he intends to work in the meantime as a consultant on elections for a U.S. company that does business in Central and South America. He may never return to his job with the county.

In seven years as registrar of voters here, Ortiz has slipped in and out of the public eye. The registrar’s job is like that. During the months or years between major elections, the office works quietly registering voters, rearranging precinct boundaries and finding new sites for polling places.

Then there’s an election, and suddenly the office--and the registrar--are the center of attention.

In 1982, for example, Ortiz was accused by Congressional candidate Michael Aguirre of bending the rules to allow county Supervisor Jim Bates to file papers needed to get his name on the primary election ballot. Ortiz won that battle in court. Later that year, Ortiz refused to find fault with the historic write-in election of Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), despite evidence that 62% of the voting booklets used in the district were tampered with or defaced. Once again, Ortiz was upheld in court. Late last year, the result of the Vista redevelopment referendum was overturned when a Superior Court judge ruled that four of six ballots disqualified by Ortiz should have been counted as “yes” votes.

But Ortiz’s latest predicament apparently has no connection to the elections themselves. Rather, Ortiz has said the district attorney’s probe focuses on his relationship with private contractors and suspected “irregularities” in the awarding of those contracts. Ortiz’s relationship with several Chicago-area businesses since 1984 and two recent trips he took to the city are apparently at the center of the investigation.

The registrar’s list of contractors is stacked heavily with firms and consultants who are either from Illinois or have done business there. Ortiz says the connection is a natural one because San Diego and Chicago are among dozens of jurisdictions that use the same punch card voting system and thus have much in common.

In March, Ortiz and five of his employees went to Chicago on their own time for three days to observe that city’s municipal elections and to meet with contractors who either do work for San Diego County now or hope to do so in the future.

Ortiz’s trip was paid for by a salesman employed by Pandick Midwest, a printing company interested in bidding on the lucrative contract for printing the county’s sample ballots. While he was in Chicago, Ortiz took tours of the company’s printing plant and spoke with several of the firm’s supervisors, Pandick President Bob Leuser said in an interview with The Times.

Air fare for the five other employees was provided by Jeffries Banknote, the printer with the current contract for printing the county’s ballots, according to registrar’s spokeswoman Maggie Edwards. Jeffries also prints ballots for the city of Chicago, and the company was holding a “users meeting” for officials of the two jurisdictions to discuss their common problems and ideas, Edwards said.

The employees’ hotel bills and some of their meals were paid for by Lance Gough, who owns Election Management Co., a computer consulting firm that has done work for San Diego County. Gough told The Times that he was working in March as a consultant for Jeffries--acting as host for the meetings and helping to arrange tours of the Chicago election offices for the San Diego workers.

Gough, who worked 10 years for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, said he passed the expenses along to Jeffries Banknote. Jeffries officials and attorneys declined to comment on the Ortiz affair when reached by The Times.

On the same trip, Ortiz and his election workers went to St. Charles, Ill., a small town west of Chicago, to see the operation of Election Data Corp., a firm that supplies voting booklets, booths and other accessories to San Diego County. According to one county employee who was there, the day trip included lunch with Richard J. Stephens, president of Election Data and the recipient of a $117,000 contract in June for verifying local signatures on a statewide initiative petition.

Six weeks after the first Chicago trip, Ortiz went to Chicago again, this time at the request of the Board of Elections. Board chairman Michael Lavelle said he invited Ortiz to Chicago to help him administer a heated special election in a heavily Latino ward. The board paid Ortiz’s travel expenses and paid him $300 a day for three days as a consultant.

Lavelle said Ortiz played a key role in helping calm suspicions when it turned out that an unusually large number of voters had gone into the voting booths but then voted for both candidates or for neither on the single-race ballot. The race for the alderman’s seat in the key ward was crucial to the balance of power between Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and the city’s old-line Democratic machine.

“We were getting allegations that we had fixed the computer program to cause drop offs and votes for one candidate . . . “ Lavelle said. He said Ortiz explained the apparent discrepancy by pointing out the heavy pressure and intense emotions involved in the campaign might have prompted some voters to enter the voting booth but then cast a meaningless ballot.

Lavelle said Ortiz’s comments that morning were worth the $900 he was paid even “if nothing else had happened the three days Ray was here.”

Lavelle, an attorney with 20 years experience in the election business, is president of Election Validation Services, a private firm that audits computerized vote-counting systems. The company has received more than $30,000 in business from Ortiz’s office in the past year. But Lavelle and Ortiz said they saw no conflict of interest in the heads of both election offices hiring each other as consultants.

“I provided a service that no one else is providing in the country, and I did an outstanding job for the county,” Lavelle said. “What Ray did for the City of Chicago . . . was a benefit to the people of Chicago . . . In both instances, the services received by the public entity were greater than the remuneration paid out. There was good service given in both instances, and I am not ashamed of that at all.”

Other election officials around the country interviewed by The Times said they were surprised that Ortiz was under investigation. They said that, although Ortiz was known widely for his extensive use of contractors, they doubted he would be implicated in any wrongdoing.

Gary Greenhalgh, president of Elections Center Inc., a nonprofit group that sponsors training sessions for election administrators, said it is common for registrars to work closely with companies that sell election supplies or computer equipment.

“It’s a very thin line you walk between working with a vendor, helping that guy succeed--you want him to succeed because you bought his damn software--between that and regulating and saying, ‘You’re working for me because I’m paying you with county money,’ ” Greenhalgh said. “I don’t think Ray’s ever crossed that line.

“If they turn anything up, the question is was he compromised in his decision-making process? I don’t think so. I don’t think you can buy Ray Ortiz for any amount of money. I don’t think he’s that kind of guy.”

Greenhalgh and others said Ortiz has a national reputation for his work in modernizing the San Diego office.

Ray Phelps, director of elections for the state of Oregon, said he came to San Diego in 1981 to watch Ortiz run the nation’s largest ballot by mail, a referendum asking voters to approve a downtown convention center. Then Phelps returned to Oregon and used what he learned from Ortiz to implement mail ballots throughout his state.

“Mr. Ortiz blazed the trail for us,” Phelps said.

Los Angeles City Clerk Lee Martinez said he is “trying to catch up with some of the things (Ortiz) was doing five years ago.” Martinez said he planned to imitate the system of regional counting centers Ortiz set up to speed the tallying of ballots in San Diego, and the Los Angeles official said he admired Ortiz’s handling of absentee ballots.

Orange County Registrar Al Olson called Ortiz “one of the more progressive and innovative registrars” in California.

“We’re always hearing about Ortiz trying something new and different in San Diego County,” Olson said. “They always seem to be somewhat ahead of us down there.”

Greenhalgh said he ranks Ortiz among the top five of 13,000 election administrators in the country. “I consider him absolutely top drawer,” he said.

One of 13 children in a poor family raised in Sanger, a small town near Fresno, Ortiz said he learned at an early age to make do with what he was handed in life. After school and on weekends, Ortiz worked in the fields--picking peaches, grapes and other products and toiling in the local packing plants.

“Ray has always been a hustler,” said Bob Flores, who with his brother, Tom, now head coach of the Los Angeles Raiders football team, grew up with Ortiz. “He sets his mind on doing something and he does it . . . He hustled to get where he’s at, without any help from his family.”

Ortiz left high school in 1953 to join the Army, and served with the 11th Airborne, a paratrooper unit. He was one of the first members of the Army’s Special Forces--the Green Berets--and went to Vietnam as a military adviser.

Being a Green Beret, Ortiz said, taught him to improvise--a talent for which he is now well known.

“They throw you out in the middle of a field and you’re supposed to survive however you know how,” Ortiz said. “You use whatever is necessary to do the job.”

In 1962, Ortiz left the Army and began 24 years of work as a civil servant, first as an administrator at the Los Angeles County hospital, then with the county’s registrar of voters. In 1975, he moved over to the secretary of state’s election division, where he was second in command.

When Ortiz took over the San Diego office in 1979, the county still relied on paper ballots that voters marked with ink stamps. Voter registration affidavits were all filed on paper and had to be researched by hand. Office workers had to look up each voter’s address on a list to assign that voter a precinct number.

Now, votes are cast on computer punch cards that can be tallied quickly. Recent counts have been completed by 2 a.m. the morning after the election, compared to past results that were not final until well after dawn. Voter registration forms are now on microfiche, easily accessible to office workers and the public alike. Precinct numbers are assigned by computer.

Ortiz has contracted extensively with private businesses to do tasks once performed by his staff or by part-time workers hired at election time. Only in San Diego County are signatures on petitions verified by a private firm. The same company--Election Data Corp.--brings in workers to assemble the booklets into which voters place their punch cards before they vote. Election Data also sells portable cardboard voting booths to the county.

Not all of Ortiz’s innovations have been successful. He wanted to sell advertisements to help defray the cost of printing sample ballots but has so far failed to win approval for the scheme. And it was Ortiz’s idea to place television monitors at election central in June to help the media and the public follow the results. But that idea backfired when the monitors broke down, leading people to believe the count, too, had stalled.

Keith Boyer, assistant registrar, said Ortiz has reduced the office’s permanent payroll from a high of 70 to its current 56. The cost of registering voters, he said, has been cut in half since 1980.

Ortiz maintains that the district attorney’s investigation will end with nothing but a realization that the myriad contracts awarded by Ortiz have brought the registrar’s office out of the dark ages of election administration and made it an example in its field. That transformation was achieved because Ortiz was willing and eager to work closely with the private sector to find the expertise and equipment needed to make the office more efficient, he said.

“I believe that private industry can beat the pants off of government . . . “ Ortiz said. “In private industry, good work gets rewarded. They can usually beat you at your own game.”