Accusations of Double Voting Fail to Pan Out

Meet Joanne Acker, one of the people former Rep. Robert K. Dornan accuses of voting twice in the November election that sent him packing.

Acker is a Republican. She voted for Dornan. And she lives with her twin sister, Jeanne, another Dornan supporter.

County records show that the illegal ballot Dornan contends was cast by Joanne was in fact legitimately cast by Jeanne.

“If the Dornan people really wanted to know, they could have called,” Joanne Acker said. “Even my mother gets us mixed up sometimes.”

So goes much of the evidence of “double voting” presented by Dornan in his case to unseat Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove.)

In papers filed with Congress, which is weighing his formal challenge to Sanchez’s election, Dornan contends to have “documented” 38 cases of “double voters” and another 39 cases of people who he says illegally voted outside their home precincts.

The cases make up part of Dornan’s overall contention that he lost to Sanchez by 984 votes last November because of widespread voting fraud.

But interviews with voters and a review of public records suggest that Dornan’s contentions of workplace voting and double voting are of little merit.

While The Times found five cases where voters may have cast illicit ballots, the overwhelming majority of the 77 cases cited by Dornan involved either legitimate votes or could not be verified one way or another.

The Times found that among the 38 people Dornan contended voted twice were many people who appeared to have cast legitimate ballots, including:

* Twins with similar names.

* Fathers and sons with nearly identical names.

* Individuals who registered twice, but who voted only once.

Of the 39 people Dornan accused of illegally registering to vote using their business address instead of their home, as state law requires, The Times found:

* People who live at their businesses.

* People who live in apartments sharing the same street numbers as businesses.

* People who share what seems like the same street address as a business--but are actually in a different city.

The Times review found that Dornan submitted misspelled voter names and placed some voters in the wrong cities.

Many of the people whom Dornan accused of voter fraud said they had, in fact, voted for Dornan.

And many of the people interviewed by The Times said they were learning of the contentions for the first time, and that no one from Dornan’s office had ever contacted them.

“I voted for Dornan five or six times in the past, and now he’s disputing my vote?” asked Larry Rowenhorst of Santa Ana, who Dornan accused of voting from his business. “How asinine can you get?”

Bill Hart, a Dornan attorney who is leading the effort to unseat Sanchez, said he was not surprised by the errors. He said Dornan’s camp was eager to make its case against Sanchez and was facing tight deadlines.

“We were just running data at that point,” Hart said of the information his staff submitted to Congress in February. “What you are going to find is that some of the information pans out, and some of it doesn’t.”

Hart said the Dornan camp was still busy compiling information and would substantiate its contentions of double voting. As for the list of people allegedly voting out of businesses, he said he was less sure.

“It may turn out that there are people who were misidentified,” Hart said.

In all, The Times determined that three of the 38 people who Dornan contended voted twice may have cast illicit ballots. Two of those votes were cast by unregistered voters who used the registration of another family member--a father or a son--with the same name.

The third occurred when a woman, thinking that her absentee ballot was invalid, registered and voted a second time.

In all three cases, the people involved said they thought they were voting properly.

In a handful of cases, voters whose signatures appeared twice on voting rosters say they voted only once. In those cases, there was not enough evidence to either refute or corroborate their explanations.

The Times also found that two of the 39 people cited by Dornan registered and voted from their business addresses while living somewhere else. The overwhelming majority of the others appeared to have voted legitimately.

*

In all, Dornan contends that 1,789 invalid votes were cast--nearly twice Sanchez’s winning margin. The bulk of those contentions are difficult to verify, because names and other material, such as immigration records, are either unavailable or incomplete. In other cases, the cases are difficult to verify because Dornan provided little or no evidence to back up his contention.

Dornan’s principal contention is that 368 people registered and voted in the 46th Congressional District election before they became citizens. Dornan contends that another 152 people cast illegal ballots because, even though they were citizens by the time they voted, they registered to vote before they had completed the citizenship process.

Dornan also contends that 102 illegal immigrants cast ballots and that 128 people improperly cast absentee ballots in the November election.

California Secretary of State Bill Jones has determined that some 721 people who registered to vote on cards supplied by Hermandad Mexicana Nacional did so before they completed the citizenship process. Of that number, 442 voted in the November election, according to Jones. Hermandad is under investigation by both the secretary of state’s office and the Orange County district attorney’s office. Hermandad officials have denied any wrongdoing.

Jones’ office has not determined how many of the 442 voted in the 46th Congressional District. Moreover, many of the 442 had become citizens by the time they voted, making it unclear whether their vote was invalid.

Finally, Dornan contends that 924 more ballots are suspect because, he says, the registrar of voters office cannot account for them. Dornan has provided no evidence to substantiate this contention, and Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever says it is groundless.

Rep. Sanchez has vigorously denounced Dornan’s contentions, saying the number of invalid votes was quite small and not enough to affect the outcome of the race.

A congressional task force will come to Orange County on April 19 to hear arguments from both sides, after which it could decide whether or not Dornan’s contentions are substantive enough to hold a new election.

*

While the list of 77 voters Dornan says fraudulently voted last November forms only a part of his larger contention, the allegations are more easily verified because Dornan actually names names.

In one list submitted to Congress, Dornan contended that he has “documented” 38 cases of people voting twice.

Lever said she forwarded a much smaller list of possible double voters to the district attorney’s office.

But a Times review of Dornan’s contentions found that among the people Dornan says voted twice are twins with similar names--and fathers and sons with almost identical names--who appear to have voted properly.

Among the people Dornan accuses of voting twice is Carla Chavez of Santa Ana.

But a review of county records show that there are two registered voters at the Chavez home, Carla and her twin sister, Evilia. A review of the voting roster from the Nov. 5 election shows that both Chavezes voted, and that each voted only once.

Chavez says she’s heard the contentions--and she’s sick of them.

“Dornan’s a sore loser, and I think he’s bugging me too much,” Chavez said. “Some families have twins, so it’s a stupid mistake. There are twins out there, maybe even triplets.”

In support of his contention of double voting by Chavez, Dornan produced a list showing there were two voters at the same address with the same birth date.

Some of the people Dornan accused of voting twice were fathers and sons with identical names.

For example, Dornan contended that Clarence H. Hoon Jr. of Anaheim cast two ballots in the November election. But a review of the voting records shows that Hoon and his son, Clarence Hoon III, cast one ballot each, and that both are properly registered.

The confusion may have resulted from the fact that Hoon Jr.’s name shows up in registration records twice, and his son’s name once. When Hoon III voted, he mistakenly signed his name in one of the spaces opposite his father’s name.

In an interview, the father expressed exasperation at Dornan’s contentions.

“I don’t like Dornan,” Hoon said. “He doesn’t impress me at all.”

*

Some of the people Dornan contends voted twice are, for reasons that are not clear, listed in voter registration records two times. But records show they voted only once.

Cecilia Jurado of Anaheim, for instance, is one of the people Dornan accuses of casting two ballots. She is listed twice in county voter registration records.

But records show that Jurado voted only once.

In an interview, Jurado said that when she went to her polling place to vote, she noticed that her name was listed twice in the records.

“I have no idea why my name was on there twice,” Jurado said.

Records show that Jurado crossed out the second registration and cast one ballot.

Jurado says she is not a big fan of Dornan.

“He has been there for so long, and he has never done anything,” she said.

Lever said that staff error is sometimes to blame for people showing up twice in registration records. When a person changes his or her registration, or changes his or her address, county staffers are supposed to cancel the old registration. But sometimes they miss a name, Lever said, particularly if the person uses slight variations of their name, leaving out the middle initial one time, and using it the next.

“We’re supposed to catch all of them,” Lever said. “Sometimes we miss one.”

*

The failure of the registrar of voters office to cancel old registrations appears to have contributed to three cases where apparently invalid votes were cast in Dornan’s race.

In two cases, people who were not registered to vote cast ballots using the registration of family members with identical names whose registrations appeared twice in voting records.

Miguel Martinez of Anaheim is listed twice in county registration records. He registered once in 1996 and once in 1995.

Dornan contends Martinez voted twice.

In an interview, Martinez said he and his son, who is also Miguel Martinez, each voted once in the election and that both are registered.

But county records show that while the father is registered to vote, his son is not.

Martinez, the father, said he was unaware that he or his son had done anything wrong. He said that on election day, he and his son went to the voting precinct, put their signatures next to their names and went into the voting booths.

“We both voted legally,” Martinez said.

In another case, it appears that a father who was not registered to vote cast a ballot using the registration of his son, who was registered twice.

In another case, a Santa Ana woman voted twice because she thought her first vote, an absentee ballot, had been invalidated.

According to her husband, Joseph Hoang, Elizabeth Hoang of Santa Ana registered to vote and cast an absentee ballot before the election. But then, thinking she had improperly completed the absentee ballot form, Hoang registered again, this time using her maiden name, Tran.

“She thought she made a mistake so she registered again and went to vote,” Joseph Hoang said.

Records show that ballots were counted for both Elizabeth Tran and Elizabeth Hoang.

Joseph Hoang said his wife did not mean to vote twice.

Lever could not be reached for comment Friday on the case of Elizabeth Tran.

*

In his submissions to the Congress, Dornan contended to have “documented” 39 cases of voters using their business address when they registered, instead of their home address. That would be a violation of state law, which requires that individuals register at their home address, and vote in the precinct where they live.

The list submitted by Dornan appears to be almost entirely inaccurate. In more than half the cases cited by Dornan, the voters he contended had voted illegally said they lived at their business or in apartments that share the same street number. That’s legal.

For example, Dornan alleged that Maricela Zarate registered from her business, Angela’s Beauty Salon at 210 S. Broadway in Santa Ana.

But Zarate does not work at the beauty salon. She lives in an apartment in the back. Zarate said she has not been contacted by anyone in the Dornan campaign, and she said she was offended at Dornan’s contentions.

“I think he is a sore loser,” Zarate said. “I do not like him. I have many family members who are immigrants, and he has said a lot of terrible things about them.”

Also on Dornan’s list of suspected illegal voters were U.S. veterans living in a homeless shelter for former servicemen in Santa Ana, and the animal curator at the Santa Ana Zoo.

“I’ve been hounded about this to the Nth degree,” said an irritated Constance Sweet, who lives in a trailer behind the monkey cage at the zoo. “If this isn’t good enough for everybody, too bad. It’s a part of my job.”

In several instances where Dornan contended illegal registration at businesses, the address cited by Dornan was correct, but the cities were wrong.

For example, Dornan contended that Richard and Tammie Bullard registered illegally from the Ace Muffler Shop on 401 E. 1st Street in Santa Ana.

The Bullards do live at 401 E. 1st Street--in Tustin.

“We’re both registered Republicans,” Tammie Bullard said.

Bullard said she has never worked for Ace Muffler, and the owners of Ace Muffler say they’ve never heard of Bullard.

*

Two people on Dornan’s list said they did register from their businesses--even though they don’t live there--in apparent violation of the law.

James and Janice Gay live in Anaheim, but they registered and voted from their business, Wrecks West in Santa Ana. They said they did not know they were doing anything wrong, and that they would change their registration.

Gay said he registered to vote at his business address because it is more convenient to vote in Santa Ana.

“I’m a small-business owner who has to make a living,” James Gay said. “All we wanted to do was exercise our right to vote, and taking two hours out of our business day was just financially unacceptable.”

Hart, Dornan’s lawyer, said he’s still confident that there were enough fraudulent votes to void the election. He said that he and others working with Dornan had recently discovered a new way to identify double voters, and that he would be releasing the results soon.

“We think there will be more than 200 of them,” Hart said.