COUNTYWIDE : Perot Volunteers Submit Sign-Ups

Ross Perot’s Reform Party turned in 1,377 party registration forms at the Orange County registrar of voters office Monday, continuing a drive to seek a line on the ballot for the nascent political movement in California.

The registrar’s official count of Reform Party registrations was 105 last Tuesday, the most recent tally taken. The office is due to do another count of Reform Party registrations today, a spokeswoman said.

Reform Party officials must obtain about 89,000 registrations throughout the state before Oct. 24 to qualify for the ballot.

In 1992, about a quarter of Orange County’s vote went to Perot, providing him with more than 10% of his 2.3 million votes in the state.

As a result, Orange County is crucial to the party’s chances to get on the ballot, officials have said.

Results in the 2-week-old registration drive appear to be falling short of the mark, but workers with Perot’s group say that is because registrars across the state do not have up-to-date tallies and because mail-in registration forms are slow in finding their way to those offices.

“We are very optimistic that we are going to make it,” said Joan Vinson, a spokeswoman in Orange County with Perot’s United We Stand America organization. “Word is getting out that there really is going to be a choice” on the ballot other than Democrats and Republicans.

During the weekend, the campaign stuffed more than 700,000 party registration forms into major newspapers in Los Angeles and Orange counties, she said.