County’s Unregistered Voters Are the Life of the Parties : Politics: Today is the deadline to sign new electors. The Republicans are out to regain the Democrats’ sole legislative seat.

On this balmy autumn afternoon, the political mercenaries are out looking for new recruits for the big war that is just four weeks away.

A frazzled-looking young woman bites her thumbnail as she roams the parking lot of a Lucky supermarket in Santa Ana--ground zero for the Orange County battle in a year when Democrats nationwide are struggling to keep their legislative seats.

Clutching a clipboard, the woman asks shoppers to register to vote before today’s deadline and then almost scolds them when they say, “No.”

“You don’t vote? Do you pay taxes?” she shouts to one man as he rolls past her on in-line skates. “Take a stand against Pete Wilson by registering Democrat to vote!” she yells at another man who avoids eye contact while hastily grabbing a shopping cart.

Just a few paces away, a Newport Beach retiree takes a less combative approach. She sits erectly in a folding chair near the entrance to the supermarket, her clipboard on her lap. Her Republican voter registration sign is posted on the brick wall behind her.

“Sir, are you registered to vote?” she asks with a smile. The woman then turns to a visitor and explains: “This is basically a Democratic area. We are asked to just be more of a service than aggressive. I usually just lay back to see if they even speak English.”

But she is competitive. Earlier in the week, when a Democratic Party worker tried to engage in one-on-one combat for some of the same shoppers, “I told him I was already here and there’s another door,” she says.

If the Democratic worker seems to be under more pressure, it’s because her party is under siege.

In a year when the Democrats are expected to take a sound beating at the hands of Republicans in the Nov. 8 election, the local GOP is mounting an assault to take away the only Orange County legislative seat now held by a Democrat, the 69th Assembly District being vacated by Assemblyman Tom Umberg of Garden Grove.

Compounding the pressure on the Democrats are charges by Republicans that they have artificially inflated voter registration rolls in central Orange County, where both parties are battling for control.

Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) has vowed to spot check the list of Democratic voters that gets turned in before today’s voter registration deadline, and he plans to monitor the polls in central Orange County on Election Day to ensure that no Democrat attempts to vote twice.

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Democrats claim the Republican threats are attempts to intimidate Latinos from voting in an area of the county that has a large minority population. They contend that the GOP is simply angry that Democrats have climbed to a 22-point voter registration edge over Republicans in the 69th District, which includes parts of Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove.

Democrats deny the Republican charge that they have registered non-citizen Latinos to vote. On the other hand, Democrats allege that Republicans have illegally registered non-citizens in the Vietnamese community in past elections, a charge the GOP denies.

Proving these allegations, said Donald Tanney, the county’s registrar of voters, is nearly impossible.

“I bet you every campaign has had problems,” he said, adding that his office is constantly fielding voter complaints about both parties.

Recently, at the urging of Conroy and other local Republican officials, Tanney ran a computer check of duplicate voter registrations for all political parties and purged 4,053 names. The duplications could have been caused by a computer error, or because people re-registered under new names--most likely the result of marriages or divorces, Tanney said.

But there was no evidence to prove Republican charges of voter fraud by Democrats, he added. “We found not one that attempted to vote twice in the same election,” Tanney said.

Republicans and Democrats concede that some of the perceived abuses in the voter registration programs come from a practice often used by both sides: the hiring of “bounty hunters” who are paid for each new voter registration card they turn in to their political bosses.

In the 69th District, the hunt for new voters before today’s deadline has been intense.

As he pounded the pavement Saturday in search of voters at the Lucky supermarket in Santa Ana, 48-year-old James E. Jackson says he was drawn to the Democratic cause by money.

The unemployed Anaheim resident says the Democrats are paying him $5.40 per hour for a six-hour shift, but he could boost his pay to $3 per card if he turns in more than 10 new Democratic voters.

“If you go out and bust your butt and if you bring in more than your salary, you get paid more,” Jackson says.

But Jackson complains that he isn’t having a good day. He has collected 10 cards so far, but he says he would have had many more if four Democrats--non-paid volunteers--had not shown up and competed with him earlier.

The Republican who is also competing with him, Newport Beach resident Marge Price, says she was not doing it for the money; she just wants to help her party.

Still, she is getting paid $5 an hour, with a chance to earn $2 for every voter registration card if she averages more than two cards per hour. During her first three hours on duty, she has collected only six voter registrations.

Although no major problems have so far appeared with the voter registration drives now ending, Tanney warns potential voters to check with the county if their voter identification cards do not arrive two weeks before the election--particularly if the voter was registered by a member of the opposite party. The law requires campaign workers to turn in all registration cards they collect, but that does not always happen, Tanney said.

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“It’s quite possible that a person is not going to get paid if he mails a card for the wrong party,” Tanney said. “The card may get thrown away. We have heard stories, but you cannot verify them because we don’t have the evidence, sad to say.”

Last spring, Tanney’s office discovered a batch of voter registration cards turned in by local Democrats that were believed to be fraudulent.

“It looked like some creative writing was being done,” Tanney said. “We called the campaign and referred it to the district attorney.” He said the campaign voluntarily purged the cards that were collected by the person under suspicion.

The case has not been resolved, Tanney said, adding that he expects little will come out of it, as in most other complaints involving voter registration. “The reality is: It’s not a high priority,” he said.

Pam Guerry, who was hired by Democratic leaders in Sacramento to run their Orange County voter registration program, downplayed the episode.

“That’s all been taken care of,” Guerry said. “Someone was turning in good ones (voter registration cards) with bad ones. Unfortunately, there are some people who are more concerned about money.”