INS Resists Request for Voter Check

California Secretary of State Bill Jones’ request that federal authorities check the Orange County voter file for noncitizens is drawing continued resistance from U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials, who had originally indicated they would comply.

“We have a lot of concerns” about doing the computer comparison requested by the secretary of state, said INS chief spokesman Eric Andrus in Washington on Friday.

Andrus said the review raised “important issues about privacy, confidentiality and discrimination” that are being assessed by officials at the Department of Justice in Washington.

It is “indeterminate” how long that assessment will take, he said.

Andrus raised similar concerns more than a month ago when Jones made the request to Richard K. Rogers, Los Angeles district director of the INS. At the time, Rogers said the request was valid and both officials agreed that it would be handled in the Los Angeles district office.

But in the past few weeks, federal immigration officials have been reluctant to make records available in a related case.

The INS has twice refused to comply with subpoenas from former Rep. Robert K. Dornan seeking access to its records to identify noncitizen voters. Dornan is challenging the election victory of his opponent, Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), saying he lost his seat to voter fraud. A congressional task force will weigh his arguments during a hearing in Santa Ana today.

Although the INS has assisted Jones and the Orange County district attorney’s office in checking citizenship records against 1,160 people registered by Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Latino rights organization, it did so because those agencies were conducting a criminal investigation.

Jones found that in the 46th Congressional District, 490 people unlawfully registered on cards issued by Hermandad before becoming citizens and 303 of them “unlawfully voted.” Countywide, he said, 721 apparently had not completed the citizenship process before they registered and 442 unlawfully voted. Jones said those findings have given him “probable cause” to seek INS assistance in checking the citizenship of 1.3 million voters countywide.

But Andrus said Jones’ request may be outside the “law enforcement exemption.”

In addition to examining the “technical possibility of the data match,” Andrus said, the agency must protect privacy rights.

Exceptions to the privacy guarantees are made for government agencies engaged in “criminal or civil law enforcement activity,” according to U.S. law, and for Congress or its committees.

Jones has argued that he is entitled to the information because, as the state’s chief elections officer, he is charged under statute and the state Constitution with “ensuring the integrity of all aspects of the election process in California.”

Jones, a Republican, will strongly press the need for the INS to do the review and share its results when he testifies today in Santa Ana at the congressional hearing.

Latino and Democratic leaders say Jones’ request is overly broad, would invade people’s privacy and is designed to assist Dornan’s case. They have also said information gleaned from INS databases would be suspect because INS record-keeping is notoriously poor.