Democrats Call for Dismissal of Challenge

The day after revelations that dozens of “suspect” voters cited by former Rep. Robert K. Dornan were legitimately registered voters, House Democrats on Friday pressed Republicans to drop the investigation into Dornan’s challenge to the election victory of Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove).

The call for dismissal of the election contest came on the same day that a federal court judge in Orange County blocked enforcement of subpoenas Dornan recently issued to prove his case that he lost the election to Sanchez due to illegal voting.

On Friday, The Times reported that a sampling of more than 700 votes Dornan said are “suspect” turned up a large number of registered voters, including U.S. Marines, nuns, senior citizens and even some Dornan supporters.

In a statement released Friday on Capitol Hill, Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the investigation by The Times furthered Democrats’ contention that Dornan is using taxpayers’ money to “help promote his candidacy for a grudge match in 1998.” Dornan lost the seat to Sanchez last November by 984 votes.

Dornan recently filed an affidavit with the House Contested Election Task Force--a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee--which listed 127 addresses totaling about 700 votes that he said were “suspect” because there were at least six voters at these locations.

Times reporters interviewed residents at 60 of the 127 addresses and did not uncover any evidence of illegal or nonexistent voters.

Some of the locations on Dornan’s list included a convalescent home run by nuns, mobile home parks and the Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station. None of the 17 Marines on Dornan’s list were Democrats.

“The antics of Bob Dornan and Republican members of the House Contested Elections Task Force, which gave private citizen Dornan the subpoena power to conduct his witch hunt, have again been proven to be politically motivated and without merit,” Frost said.

The House leader urged Republicans to “immediately dismiss Dornan’s claim and stop wasting taxpayers’ money on this investigation.” The House’s budget to investigate contested elections totals $320,000.

Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the panel reviewing Dornan’s election contest, was not available for comment.

At the National Republican Congressional Committee, spokesman Rich Galen said no cost is too great to ferret out voter fraud.

“Most reasonable people think there is still enough information that there might have been significant amounts of illegal voters going to the polls,” Galen said. “The relatively small cost to the taxpayers is more than offset by the greater need to ensure that elections are fairly conducted.”

In addition to the 700 “suspect” votes, Dornan claimed that 1,789 illegal votes were cast in the last election.

Republicans have maintained that Dornan’s affidavit was only part of the reason the panel decided to proceed with the election contest. Other contributing factors were the ongoing voter fraud investigations by the Orange County district attorney’s office and the secretary of state, they said.

Without commenting on the veracity of Dornan’s list of “suspect” voters, Galen added that Dornan probably conducted “a fairly standard kind of computerized check of suspicious addresses.”

But as Democrats turned up the heat, there was little expectation that the task force made up of two Republicans and one Democrat would take any action before a hearing to be held in Orange County on April 19.