Dornan to File Papers in Effort to Overturn Election

An attorney for Robert K. Dornan, the former Republican congressman who blames his 984-vote loss to Democrat Loretta Sanchez on electoral fraud, plans to file a document with the House of Representatives today charging that thousands of ballots cast in the congressional district race may have been invalid and should not have been counted.

In a 27-page brief obtained by The Times on Thursday, Dornan attorney William Hart also accuses the Orange County registrar of voters office of “malconduct” for allegedly making errors in producing a magnetic tape of computer data showing who voted in the county.

The document charges that Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever was unable to adequately explain a 900-vote discrepancy between the number of voters on the tape and in the election results.

In mid-January, Lever sent a three-page letter to Hart offering explanations for many of the apparent discrepancies, and said that at least 11 cases of suspected double voting and four cases of voting with improper registration using business addresses had been referred to the district attorney’s office.

Dornan has formally contested the election results, and the House Oversight Committee has scheduled a hearing on the issue for the week of Feb. 24. If the House of Representatives does not invalidate or overturn the election, Dornan’s case is closed and there can be no appeal.

Sanchez has asked the committee to dismiss Dornan’s challenge, saying it is without merit and frivolous. The motion being filed today argues that the case should go forward.

The document repeats some charges that have been made by Dornan since he lost the Nov. 5 election, including charges of illegal double-voting, illegal registration to vote from business addresses and defective absentee ballot envelopes. Those problems add up to less than 300 votes.

But the bulk of the newest motion is devoted to allegations that Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Latino advocacy group, registered hundreds of clients to vote before they became citizens.

The nonprofit group, which has offices in Santa Ana and Los Angeles, has been the focus of a voting fraud investigation by the Orange County district attorney and California secretary of state. Investigators from those offices seized computers and records from Hermandad last month.

Based on court records related to that investigation, The Times identified 220 noncitizens who voted in Orange County after registering with the aid of Hermandad. A subsequent check showed that 172 of them voted in the 46th Congressional District, where Sanchez beat Dornan.

Many more apparently were noncitizens when they registered to vote, but became citizens before voting. According to an opinion from Secretary of State Bill Jones, ballots cast by anyone who registered while a noncitizen would be invalid.

Hart’s document infers that a majority of clients who took citizenship classes at Hermandad in the last year may have registered to vote there before becoming citizens.

Officials of Hermandad in Santa Ana have said that 10,000 clients went through their citizenship classes in 1996. “The significance of this is that it places the entire 10,000 ‘clients’ list in question, and suggests that a large percentage of the same may not yet be citizens even though they were registered and possibly voted in the November 1996 elections,” the document says.

According to records at the registrar of voters office, however, only 1,322 people were registered to vote by Hermandad in the last two years, and only 757 of those actually voted in the last election.

In the brief, Hart also questioned Hermandad’s nonprofit, nonpartisan status, pointing out that its executive director, Nativo Lopez, was a successful candidate for the Santa Ana Unified school board in November.

Lopez has consistently denied wrongdoing, although he has acknowledged that some Hermandad clients voted before becoming citizens. He attributed the problem to misunderstandings and eagerness to vote.

In the document, however, Hart described Hermandad as “a publicly funded, supposedly nonpartisan organization that has been engaged in the systematic registration and encouragement of noncitizen voting in the 46th Congressional District.” Hart would not comment on the document Thursday, but scheduled a news conference for today.