Illegal Voting Outcry Overdone

Two hundred or three hundred people may have registered to vote before they were sworn in as citizens.

To solve this problem, Assemblyman Dick Ackerman (R-Fullerton) wants to inconvenience 750,000 Orange County voters by requiring us to show identification such as driver’s license, utility bill or sample ballot before we vote (“Bill Pushed to Require I.D. at Voting Booth,” Feb. 16).

If he thinks about this for another five minutes, he may realize that every one of those illegally voting persons could have shown that type of identification at the polls.

Our present system is working just fine. Allegations are being investigated and willful violations of law will be punished. Because of the publicity, everybody now knows that you must wait until you are actually sworn in before you register. There is no need to change the law.

JEAN ASKHAM, Fullerton

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It is clearly racial discrimination on former Rep. Robert K. Dornan’s part to focus on potential voter fraud by Hermandad Nacional Mexicana in an effort to overturn the election that he lost. We can expect unintentional violations of legal registration procedures among all new voters in any election.

What would happen, Latino leaders ask, if agents of the Orange County district attorney were to seal off the registrar of voters office . . . for a day, go in to toss the files and tinker with computers? Would they find voter registration irregularities? Of course.

It is an affront to new Hispanic citizens of Orange County--who have been working, paying taxes and taking on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, including voting--to single them out in a search for registration irregularities.

A Los Amigos research study puts it very well: “Dornan has taken the underlying prejudice that infected Proposition 187 and brought it into the open by nakedly focusing on new Latino citizens in Orange County.”

JAMES C. MOSLEY, Corresponding Secretary, Concerned Citizens of Leisure World

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Re “Latino Leaders Stand Behind Hermandad,” Feb. 6:

As a (now retired) professor in the California State University system for some 25 years, while I was teaching it was always my understanding that when a student had successfully completed his or her course requirements for a degree, that student was, in effect, graduated.

That there would be a graduation ceremony was understood, but the ceremony was just that--ceremony. A “graduate” could attend or not attend the ceremony in order to receive the diploma.

To those who did not attend, the diploma was available at the administration office or by mail. Attendance at the graduation ceremony was not obligatory or necessary; the student was officially a graduate of Old Yahoo U by virtue of having successfully completed graduation requirements.

I wonder if this point has not been overlooked in the Dornan-generated hullabaloo over the question of “illegal voting.”

If a person who is a “legal resident” of the United States has successfully completed the citizenship course work and, yes, passed the mandatory citizenship test given by the government, should he or she not consider himself or herself a citizen? Is it really fair to charge that person with being a criminal for assuming that he or she is a citizen because the “graduate” has not yet been offered the opportunity to attend a government ceremony (and so has not done so)?

I suppose there must be some point of closure, but should a person who has legally completed the requirements for citizenship be denied the right to vote because the ceremony has been delayed?

Perhaps the system needs some overhaul.

DIXON GAYER, Huntington Beach