Noncitizens Say They Voted in Key O.C. District

Noncitizens registered to vote this fall with the aid of a Latino civil rights organization and later cast ballots in a central Orange County district that included the hotly contested Nov. 5 race between Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and Democrat Loretta Sanchez.

Nineteen people interviewed by The Times acknowledged that they voted though they had not completed the naturalization process, which is finalized with an official swearing-in ceremony. All but one were taking citizenship classes with the Santa Ana-based Hermandad Mexicana Nacional organization, which registered at least 1,357 people countywide this year. Nearly 800 of these voted in the November election.

Nativo Lopez, the executive director of Hermandad, who won a seat on the Santa Ana Unified School District board this fall, conceded that some students in the classes voted before they were sworn in. He attributed the problem to misunderstandings and overzealousness by those about to become citizens.

“I feel a responsibility to all those people who went through here that somehow down the road those things were not made clear enough to them,” he said in an interview Thursday. But he added that “my clear instruction to people was they could not vote until they were sworn in, and all my staff were instructed the same way.”

The voters, however, said in interviews this week that they were encouraged to register and vote by people they believed were associated with the organization. The 18 taking citizenship classes at Hermandad were registered to vote immediately after they passed their tests or had successfully completed an interview with an immigration official.

They said they were given voter registration material and absentee ballot applications and told they could exercise their right to vote. Many said the material was collected after it was filled out.

On Thursday, Dornan filed a complaint with the U.S. House of Representatives contesting the results of the election, which he lost by 984 votes. Dornan and his lawyers claimed they have identified as many as 3,500 potentially invalid ballots.

Michael Schroeder, an attorney for Dornan and vice chairman of the California Republican Party, said Thursday that his investigators have identified as many as 1,000 ballots cast by noncitizens or convicted felons. Schroeder provided no proof for this new claim, but he said he hoped to do so by next week.

Schroeder also repeated previous charges that about 100 people voted twice, that 125 people improperly voted from business addresses rather than their homes and that almost 200 ineligible absentee ballots were counted, among other allegations.

Sanchez has 30 days to respond to Dornan’s complaint. A House committee could later be charged with evaluating Dornan’s case. The House of Representatives would ultimately decide who gets the seat.

As part of its own review this week, The Times interviewed a Santa Ana woman who attended citizenship classes at Hermandad’s Santa Ana office. She said an unidentified woman encouraged her and others to register on Oct. 2, the day they successfully completed their interviews with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“The staffer walked into the room and asked people who had passed their INS interviews, ‘Who wants to vote in the election?’ ” she said. Several people, all potential citizens, raised their hands and were given voter registration cards, the woman said.

“I was told that I could register to vote,” said the woman. “I filled out the registration card there and they took it from me.”

It is unclear who, if anyone, advised the noncitizens they could vote, how many voted illegally or how their votes might have affected the Dornan-Sanchez race.

It is a felony under state law for someone to vote or register to vote who is not a citizen. Noncitizens who commit felonies are subject to deportation, and those who falsify information could be ineligible for citizenship, though it would depend on the individual circumstances, said Richard Rogers, Los Angeles district director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Dornan first raised the charges of fraudulent voting a week after the Nov. 5 election. He lost to Sanchez in one of the most closely watched congressional contests in the nation.

In the 46th Congressional District, Hermandad registered at least 916 people, the vast majority in the six weeks before the Oct. 7 deadline to register for the November election. Of these, 585 voted, according to a computer analysis of the vote by a Torrance-based election group.

The Orange County district attorney’s office is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of election irregularities, including that of noncitizen voting.

Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Maurice Evans declined to discuss the investigation or any aspects of the case. “We are at a junction now where we are not going to comment about this,” he said.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever said her office is cooperating with the investigation by forwarding to the district attorney information on people who may have registered illegally, including the names of 10 noncitizens who contacted the registrar to ask if they should have registered.

Lever’s office concluded a recount of the election last week. The process adjusted the election results by five votes in Dornan’s favor. But recount officials were not examining such questions as whether people voted improperly or registered illegally.

The Times contacted 64 people who cast ballots in November, drawing their names from a list of voters who registered in the 46th District. They all used registration forms signed out to Hermandad by the registrar’s office.

Some of the 64 refused to be interviewed, others said they did not vote and still others said they were born in the U.S. or were naturalized citizens when they registered to vote.

A few referred questions to Hermandad Mexicana and Lopez.

Nineteen of the 64 said they had registered before becoming citizens, and 16 of these have yet to attend a swearing-in ceremony. Three of the 19 said that they are now citizens but that they had registered before being sworn in. All but one of the 19 said they had taken citizenship classes at Hermandad offices in Santa Ana or Anaheim.

Among the people called, 44 described themselves to The Times as having registered legally, either because they were born in the United States or because they attended a naturalization ceremony before registering to vote.

Every one of the 19 who said they had voted appeared unaware that they had broken the law or that they had jumped the gun on registering to vote.

An Anaheim woman who attended citizenship classes at Hermandad’s Anaheim office in June and July said that “a secretary and teacher” both told her she was eligible for voting immediately after successfully completing her INS interview on Oct. 1.

“Immediately after the interview, a secretary handed me a voter’s registration card. I asked her if I could vote, and a female teacher answered for her. The teacher said we could vote now because we were citizens,” said the woman. “I asked them if they were sure it was legal, and the teacher said it was legal because I had passed the interview. I went ahead and voted.”

Lopez, the Hermandad executive director, said agency staff members were told to explain to students that they were not citizens until the swearing-in ceremony. When told that numerous students believed differently, he said, “I can’t explain why they would come away with that interpretation.” Lopez said he became concerned in the days before the election because Hermandad was “inundated” with calls from people wondering whether or not they could vote.

During an interview Thursday, Lopez produced a staff memo dated Nov. 2 that read, “Only the persons that went to complete their swearing-in ceremony in Los Angeles or Orange are eligible to vote.”

The naturalization process, which takes about six months to complete, begins when a noncitizen who has lived in the country for five years applies to the INS for citizenship.

Part of the procedure includes an interview with an immigration official, who asks questions about the applicant’s background and moral character, and also tests the applicant for proficiency in English and civics.

Before the interview, the applicant may attend citizenship classes and take a proficiency test. The INS is notified if an applicant passes such a test, and those who pass are not usually questioned thoroughly on those subjects during their INS interviews.

Hermandad is authorized by the INS to give the citizenship test, and INS officials also conduct citizenship interviews at Hermandad’s Santa Ana office.

INS Director Rogers said that an immigration official tells an applicant whether he or she passed the test, but that “we also notify them in writing that they are not citizens.”

“The only time they will become citizens is when they are sworn and take the oath of allegiance to the United States,” he said. “That is our process and it is very specific and we make sure those individuals are aware of that.”

Lopez, however, said INS examiners aren’t clear and that “most people walk away from those interviews with the misunderstanding that they are citizens of the United States.”

The INS letter begins with, “Congratulations! Your application for naturalization has been approved.”

Potential problems with voter registration stem in part from the fact that it is run on the honor system. Most registration is done by mail, with the voter signing the form under penalty of perjury and swearing that he or she is a citizen.

The registrar is not authorized to ask prospective registrants for voter information, identification or proof of citizenship, Lever said. In most circumstances, neither are voters required to present identification before voting at the polls, she said.

This story was reported by Times staff writers Nancy Cleeland, Dexter Filkins, H.G. Reza and Peter M. Warren. It was written by Warren.