Bill Would Give Voting Officials Access to INS Info

A Los Angeles County congressman introduced legislation Thursday that would permit the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Social Security Administration to share information with voting officials nationwide to prevent voter fraud.

U.S. Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach), the bill’s author, said it is unrelated to the dispute in the 46th Congressional District, where former Congressman Robert K. Dornan is challenging the election of Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), “but would be a tool to reduce questions about voter fraud and actual voting fraud.”

Under the bill, local officials would be able to make inquiries with the two federal agencies to verify the citizenship of people who have applied to vote, said a Horn spokesman. It would also permit the use of Social Security numbers in the voter registration process.

Currently, the INS can provide such information only for a legitimate law enforcement purpose--almost always in the case of a criminal investigation. The Social Security Administration is barred from cooperating with voter officials, the spokesman said.

However, the legislation would not allow for sweeping checks of everyone who registered.

In California, registrars generally lack the authority to verify the citizenship status of prospective registrants unless the registrar receives a complaint about the voter or has other legitimate reasons to believe the person improperly registered, said several authorities.

“The presumption is that you told the truth because you sign the registration form under penalty of perjury,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Guy Ormes. “The bill needs to say that when you register to vote you must show some sort of proof of age or citizenship or some other category that would be in question.”

The bill would also authorize nationwide the kind of check of the voting file requested last month for Orange County by Secretary of State Bill Jones--although it would take months for the bill to be signed into law, if ever, and likely would have no impact on the Jones investigation, officials said.

Jones, after determining with the help of the INS that there were more than 700 people who registered “unlawfully” in Orange County, asked the INS to check the county’s entire 1.3-million voter file for noncitizen registrants.

The INS is reviewing Jones’ request to determine if it would violate federal privacy or discrimination laws to compare the county voter list with INS databases.

The bill drew an attack from Democratic officials, who said it was designed to chill voting by immigrants in swing districts.

Horn said the best way to use the measure, should it pass, would be “to check the [databases] when people register” or to use it to randomly sample the voting list.

A spokesman for Sanchez criticized the measure, saying it violates privacy rights and introduces “big brother” to the voting system.