Officials Say Voter Fraud Is Not Hard, but It Is Rare

In many places in the United States, more identification is required to check out a dogeared library copy of “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” than to cast a ballot.

To get a library card, one must show proof of residence, such as an electric bill. To become a registered voter, one is simply required to fill out an application and sign--under penalty of perjury--that one is a U.S. citizen.

As most Californians found on election day, no one asked them to prove who they were before entering the voting booth. By law, precinct workers can ask only for a signature.

It would seem to be a system ripe for plunder by ambitious politicos--and nearly impossible to police. And the truth is it could be.

But despite the heated accusations of voter fraud leveled after nearly every close race--from state Assembly to Congress--there has been no evidence of widespread fraud.

“It is literally easier to register to vote than to use your credit card, therefore the potential is there for misdeeds,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a government scholar at Claremont McKenna College.

But as the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office discovered after researching numerous allegations, that potential has been largely unfulfilled.

“At first glance, you look at the system and say, ‘Look how easy it is to register. The fraud must be widespread,’ ” said Mike Carroll, head deputy district attorney for special investigations in Los Angeles County. “The reality is we’ve seen there is no widespread fraud.”

The latest to cry foul is Garden Grove Republican Robert K. Dornan, who angrily asserts that noncitizens are to blame for his neck-and-neck duel with Democrat Loretta Sanchez in the 46th Congressional District.

Sanchez’s success “is a prima facie case of monkey business,” the fiery conservative said. He suggested an unprecedented array of ballot-checking measures, including crunching the names of Orange County voters against those collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1990.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever she has not been provided “with any proof whatsoever that [voter fraud] is happening” in the Dornan--Sanchez race. “I’m not going to react to some type of statement with no sort of proof.”

Political pundits and election officials say that invoking the specter of voter fraud has become a convenient post-election ploy simply because it is so easy to allege and so time-consuming--and sometimes impossible--to disprove.

“We’re seeing the use of this as an election strategy rather than as a spontaneous response to a close election,” said political scientist Sherry Bebitch Jeffe at Claremont Graduate College.

State and federal officials say allegations that scores of noncitizens are casting ballots are particularly difficult to believe--and racially divisive.

“If you’re an undocumented alien, the last thing you’re going to do is file forms with the government to register for anything,” said Pitney of Claremont McKenna. “If you’re in the process of becoming a citizen, the last thing you’re going to do is break the law and jeopardize your citizenship.”

Said Sheldon Kamieniecki, a political science professor at USC: “It’s ironic this question comes up when we’re trying to get people to vote. What’s the incentive for a [noncitizen] to vote? Maybe people could be getting paid to vote, but we would hear about it. With the intensity of media scrutiny in these races, it would be very difficult to do what Dornan is suggesting.”

In Orange County, the fifth most populous county in the country, there have been only two cases of noncitizens prosecuted for voting, according to Wallace J. Wade, an Orange County assistant district attorney. One, a French national who said he voted in 1984 to show how easy it was, pleaded guilty to a felony. The other, a Canadian national, was convicted in 1995 of a misdemeanor for votes cast in 1990 and 1992.

Carroll, the Los Angeles prosecutor, said his office is currently pursuing five or six cases of noncitizens voting. In two of the cases, illegal immigrants from Mexico voted. One man didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to vote and stopped after he was contacted by the district attorney’s office, Carroll said. The second man came to the United States as a child and considered himself eligible to vote in the last three elections.

“He’s mainstream Americana and everything,” Carroll said.

If convicted, the man could face up to six years and eight months in jail for perjury and voting when he was not entitled.

Another voter fraud bugaboo raised by politicians is the use of bounty hunters to sign up voters, including noncitizens and others ineligible to vote, outside of markets and shopping malls.

But Carroll said his office found that “only a minuscule number” of the people signed up by bounty hunters ever vote. Instead, Carroll said, he is prosecuting the bounty hunters for theft, on the theory that they stole from those who paid them by signing up people they knew were ineligible to vote.

“We prosecuted one woman who signed up dead people,” Carroll said. “She just went through the phone book and registered people to vote.”

Despite the lack of widespread fraud, Carroll and others monitoring the system believe California’s voting system needs to be tightened up--if only to dispel the perception of fraud.

In October, California Secretary of State Bill Jones made public his voter fraud prevention program, which includes creating a statewide voter file that would link the state’s 58 counties and help rid the rolls of “deadwood,” thousands of voters who have moved, died or are listed more than once. Jones estimates that 10% to 15% of the names on voting rolls should be purged, but he stressed that “deadwood is not necessarily vote fraud.”

Jones also gained the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s cooperation in checking the citizenship status of those suspected of voting illegally. The identities of new citizens and those in the process of becoming citizens usually are not public record.

Counties have recently been asked to compare jury summonses that are returned as “can’t serve, not a citizen” against the county voter files. And, for the first time, each county will send computer tapes of everyone who voted in this election to the state to cross-check for duplicate voters, Jones said.

Since last year, those registering to vote are asked, but not required, to provide their driver’s license number.

Jones said since the federal Privacy Act passed in 1978, California has been hampered in ferreting out possible voter fraud because it cannot use the Social Security rolls to check for citizenship.

He said he is trying to convince the Legislature to require voters to show a picture ID in order to vote, as some states currently do. But he is not optimistic.

“I think that the perception is that we’re trying to inhibit the vote,” he said. “That’s not the case. As we increase the ease of voting . . . we need to ensure the system of registration is tight enough.”

* SANCHEZ MOVES FAST: Could-be congresswoman is instant political celebrity. A22

* COMPLICATING COUNT: “Motor voter” and provisional ballots are cited in delays. A22