Man Faces Hearing in Voter Fraud Case

A Huntington Beach man has pleaded not guilty to filing 21 fake voter registration forms during a Democratic Party drive last year.

The forms were allegedly signed by Clifford Gordon Martens, 30, who was being paid $3 “bounty” for each new voter by the California Voters Registration Fund, an arm of the Assembly Democratic Caucus.

Prosecutors say Martens allegedly filed forms with either fictitious names or the names of non-citizens.

County Registrar of Voters Donald F. Tanney, who said an inquiry was started when similarities in signatures on registration cards were discovered last fall, described the case as the most significant involving voter-registration fraud in the county in the last seven years.

However, Tanney said, “as far as I know, there is no indication that illegal votes were cast because of this person’s activities.”

Martens was arraigned last week on 42 felony counts involving the allegedly bogus registrations, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for Friday in Santa Ana. Meanwhile, Martens remains in Orange County Jail in lieu of $5,000 bail. Tanney said some of the allegedly bogus registrations occurred in the 72nd Assembly District, where Republican Curt Pringle’s narrow victory over Democrat Christian F. (Rick) Thierbach last November is still being disputed.

Local Democrats have asked a federal court to overturn Pringle’s election, claiming that uniformed security guards posted at polling places in Latino communities by Pringle supporters intimidated potential Thierbach voters. Republicans contend that the guards were intended only to discourage voting by non-citizens.

Republican officials said the alleged abuse shows that their fears of voter fraud on Election Day last November, particularly in the 72nd District, were justified.

“We had strong suspicions that these activities were going on last spring and summer,” said Greg Haskin, executive director of the Republican Party of Orange County. “It is a very serious situation because it points out how easily voter registration fraud can take place,” Haskin said. “I personally believe that the fraud that took place is much greater than 21 voters.”

Paul Garza, executive director of the Orange County Democratic Party, said he was upset about the alleged incident but said it should not be over-dramatized.

“Twenty-one cards out of over 12,000 registrations in the 72nd District is not a dirty trick,” Garza said. “It doesn’t constitute a massive amount of fraud.”

“Obviously, we’re very upset it happened, but we regard this as an individual action,” Garza said. The registration drive by the Democrats was a “very clean” operation, and the alleged abuses were an aberration, he said.

Garza said both political parties pay a bounty to people who register voters. “We did it, the Republicans did it,” he said.

Martens was one of many canvassers hired by the California Voters Registration Fund during what Democrats said was one of their most successful, as more than 300,000 voters were signed up across the state.

Garza said Martens had been fired twice by the registration group, once for drinking on the job and the second time for trying to file false voter registration affidavits.

Alison Harvey, an aide to Assemblyman Phil Isenberg (D-Sacramento), who chaired the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee last year, said Wednesday that incidents like the alleged one in Orange County happen to both political parties.

“When we discover people faking registration cards, we fire them immediately and turn them into the authorities,” Harvey said. It is not, she said, “a partisan issue.”