ELECTIONS / HAWTHORNE : D.A. Investigating Alleged Voter Registration Fraud : Proposition P: Advocates of the card club referendum deny that they deliberately padded rolls with false names and claim they were set up. Two leading opponents received false registration cards.

The district attorney’s office has opened an investigation into allegations of voter registration fraud in Hawthorne, where a controversial card club referendum will be decided next week.

At issue are charges that the names of five dead people and even a 6-month-old baby showed up on a list of new voters registered by the Hawthorne Economic Improvement Committee, a group that is pushing for passage of Proposition P, the card club initiative.

The organization signed up 5,800 new voters in a registration drive, and denies that it set out to deliberately pad the voting rolls with fictitious names. The group claims it was set up by opponents.

Gail Ehrlich, a deputy in the district attorney’s special investigations division, said her office considers the allegations from both sides serious enough to investigate.

“We’ve received complaints that there is a problem and the complaints have come from a variety of sources, including proponents and opponents of the gaming initiative,” Ehrlich said.

One of the first complaints came from Shirley Duff, chairwoman of People Against Poker, an organization campaigning against the card club proposal. Duff said she received a voter registration card more than two weeks ago confirming that her late husband had registered to vote on Sept. 23.

Duff’s husband, David, died of cancer a year and a half ago.

After several trips to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder’s office and calls from other residents, Duff said she discovered several more deceased people who were registered last month and dozens more who were registered twice with altered birth dates, initials and party affiliations.

“This is unreal,” she said. “The double registration is phenomenal . . . there is a person listed as a registered voter who was born in April, 1992.”

Duff said she is reluctant to disclose the names of the other deceased people because she wants to see if they show up next week as having cast a ballot.

Ehrlich said that will not happen.

“We have been assured by the registrar-recorder’s office that they’re devoting special resources prior to the election and on Election Day to make sure there are no problems in terms of actual voting,” Ehrlich said.

Carl Capozzola, an attorney representing the Hawthorne Economic Improvement Committee, said he thinks his clients were set up by their opponents.

“I don’t think it’s coincidental that they registered two chief opponents knowing the inaccuracy would be discovered,” Capozzola said, referring to Duff and City Councilman Larry Guidi. “What better way to discredit our position than to show fictitious registration which casts doubts on our credibility?”

Guidi, who has been vocal in his opposition to a card club, was the second “chief opponent” who received false registration cards. Guidi said he received three false registration cards in his name with variations on his birth date.

“I’m disgusted and outraged,” Guidi said. “I can’t believe someone would do something this low. I believe they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

The Hawthorne Improvement Committee said it contracted with an independent firm, the Southern California Advance Team, for about $20,000 to conduct the registration drive. Basil Kimbrew, director of the team, said he hired 50 employees from outreach programs in the community to register voters.

He started out by paying the employees $2.50 for every registration card turned in, and that was doubled two weeks before the registration deadline earlier this month.

“Things were going fine until the bounty was increased,” Kimbrew said.

His group signed up 5,800 new voters in four weeks, Kimbrew said, and of those he speculated only about 50 were incorrect.

He said he and Improvement Committee campaign manager Harvey Englander met weekly to go over the cards and weed out the ones they felt might be fraudulent. Kimbrew said when he discovered two employees had turned in bogus registration cards, he notified the registrar’s office and fired the employees immediately.

Mark Young, co-chair of the Hawthorne Economic Improvement Committee, said his group conducted the registration drive because it concluded that people who were not registered probably had the most to gain from a card club in the city.

“Our polling indicated that increased police protection and more jobs were important to people who were not in the election process--but they had the most to gain,” Young said.

According to data from the registrar’s office, Hawthorne voter registration increased 35% since May, while neighboring cities increased between 10% and 17%. Hawthorne now has about 29,000 registered voters.

This is the second time the district attorney’s office has been asked to investigate allegations of voter fraud in Hawthorne. Investigators are still looking into allegations of fraudulent absentee ballots in the closely contested City Council election in November, 1991.

Whatever the outcome of the investigation, it will be too late for Hawthorne resident Barbara Kropf.

A few days after she moved into Hawthorne, she said a man came to her door and asked her to register to vote. She filled out her application, signed the bottom and turned it over to the solicitor. She also mentioned that her son lived at the residence but was already registered.

A few weeks later, she received four registration packages, addressed to a Carmen Kropf and three variations on her son’s name, Robert. But she never received a correct package for herself, and she has no idea who Carmen Kropf is.

“I’m so mad,” she told the City Council at a meeting last week, “because of this mess, I’m being denied my right to vote.”