‘Unlawful’ Votes Fail to Change Outcome

The number of “unlawful” votes cast in the 46th Congressional District is 303, significant but not nearly enough to eliminate the 984-vote gap between U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez and challenger Robert K. Dornan, according to a letter sent to Congress on Wednesday by Secretary of State Bill Jones.

The analysis involved 1,160 people registered countywide with the aid of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, the Latino rights group being investigated by state and local authorities in connection with alleged voter fraud last year.

In the 46th, Hermandad registered 827 people, 555 of whom voted. More than half of those votes were “unlawful,” according to Jones.

The secretary of state is working with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to do a computerized review of all 1.3 million registrations in Orange County. The analysis is to determine if there is a broader problem involving voting by noncitizens and people who registered to vote before they were naturalized, a spokesman for Jones said.

The information was released in a letter from Jones to Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield), who chairs the congressional committee investigating claims by Dornan that voter fraud altered the results of the election. Dornan and Jones are both Republicans. Sanchez is a Democrat.

Spokesmen for both Sanchez and Dornan each took cheer from the news, the first official count by Jones of unlawful votes in the 46th District.

“Jones has again reconfirmed that Loretta Sanchez is the congresswoman from the 46th District,” said Wylie Aitken, her attorney and campaign chairman. “Whatever the Hermandad impact, it did not change the result.”

Aitken said the challenge filed by Dornan to Sanchez’s election should get its final hearing April 19 at a session scheduled in Orange County by the three-member congressional task force appointed by Thomas to look into the issue.

Dornan attorney Bill Hart said the evidence shows that “hundreds of people voted illegally” and he challenged Sanchez to support an inquiry by the INS and Congress to determine the extent of noncitizen voting.

“It has been said that Bob Dornan is a sore loser, that he is crazy or that this is Latino bashing,” Hart said. “All of those now go out the window. To stop here, when the first very conservative look at illegal voting shows the allegations are now proven, would seem to me to be crazy.”

Richard K. Rogers, the INS district director in Los Angeles, was on jury duty and unavailable to comment on the progress of his agency’s review of the citizenship status of Orange County’s voters.

Jones sought the review last month while announcing that 721 noncitizens countywide had registered unlawfully last year on affidavits supplied by Hermandad; 442 of those people later voted though many of them--Jones has not said how many--were citizens by election day.

The voter file check by INS and the secretary of state’s office has been widely criticized by Democratic and Latino leaders as unwarranted and an invasion of privacy.

Rob Lapsley, chief of staff to Jones, said Wednesday that computer experts from his staff had worked with INS experts in Washington, D.C., during Easter weekend and resolved the technical problems involved in electronically comparing the Orange County voter file with the INS central index system.

“It can be done,” he said.

Lapsley said he did not know whether INS had completed the computer comparison or if the information had been forwarded to Rogers from headquarters.

Regardless, Sanchez’s lawyers disputed whether there are 303 “unlawful” votes as identified by Jones.

Fred Woocher, a Sanchez lawyer, said that 130 of these were cast by people who registered prematurely but were citizens by the time of the election.

“If you don’t follow the process but have every legal right to vote, does a glitch in the process change what otherwise would be a legal vote?” Aitken said. “I would say this issue is a constitutional issue, not purely a question of state law.”

James Sweeney, chief counsel to Jones--the state’s chief election officer--said, “It is clear under [several state statutes] that to vote you have to be registered, and in order to register you have to be a U.S. citizen. There is no ambiguity there.”

The report also said that an additional 69 ballots were cast in the 46th District by people whose citizenship status is of “unknown legality,” which means they were born outside the country and have never had contact with the INS.

The Sanchez side took issue with whether the 69 voters of “unknown legality” should be viewed with suspicion, saying they likely could include people born abroad of U.S. citizens or those whose records the INS could not locate.

“When you have 69 people whose status you don’t know, you have to presume they are valid votes,” Aitken said. “Dornan has the burden of proof to show they are invalid.”

Hart suggested the answer is obvious: “They are foreign born and not in the INS database. What is the logical conclusion?”