State Officials to Target Voter Fraud Issue : Elections: Atty. Gen. Lungren and Secretary of State Jones say they will aggressively investigate complaints.

California Secretary of State Bill Jones and Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren on Wednesday put the final flourishes on an agreement to aggressively pursue allegations of voter fraud.

The action stemmed from complaints last year that voter fraud had contaminated the 1994 elections. Republican Senate candidate Mike Huffington was particularly insistent that improprieties were to blame for his close loss to Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein.

Lungren and Jones said there was no way to determine the impact of fraud on the Senate race. The decision to set up a task force to monitor fraud, they said, stemmed from the “vulnerability” of the electoral system.

At present, Jones said, 15% to 20% of those on voting lists are either dead or have moved, yet the names remain active and present a tempting target for fraud. The system also allows people to register to vote in several counties--or under several names--without much fear of prosecution, they said.

“I’m not here to try and say I can show you a particular race that was changed as a result of voter fraud,” Lungren said at a Los Angeles news conference. “But the problem is, I can’t tell you absolutely that no race was not changed by that, and I think that’s our big problem out here.”

Jones said the secretary of state’s office is looking at 170 voter fraud complaints, some of which include up to 300 accusations of wrongdoing. Those deemed substantive will be forwarded to county district attorneys for prosecution.

Both men acknowledged that prosecuting voter fraud has not been high on the state agenda, with just a handful of cases prosecuted in the last year. But they said they hoped that the task force would draw attention to the problem.

Under the terms approved by Jones and Lungren, workers in both offices will monitor fraud complaints and dispose of the cases promptly. Three investigators from the secretary of state’s office will assist initially, and Jones said he hopes to add to those ranks.

“We need to make it clear as a deterrent to these individuals who would commit this kind of voter fraud in the future that this is unacceptable in California,” he said.