House Panel Also Wants INS Audit of All O.C. Voters

The congressional committee mediating the voter fraud dispute between former Congressman Robert K. Dornan and current Rep. Loretta Sanchez asked the INS on Friday to verify the citizenship of all of Orange County’s 1.3 million voters, echoing a request made last month by California’s secretary of state.

Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner to check the entire county voter roll against the agency’s citizenship records.

Secretary of State Bill Jones on March 14 asked the INS to do the same review but told the committee last week at an all-day hearing in Santa Ana that the agency had not yet complied.

Thomas’ request appeared to be an attempt to bring congressional pressure on the INS, which has expressed reservations about attempting the unprecedented search. Thomas said he was speaking for the entire committee and expected a response by Thursday.

Russ Bergeron, an INS spokesman, said Friday the agency would consider the request but still had to weigh the needs of the congressional committee against its mandate to preserve the privacy of naturalized citizens.

“This is not a black-and-white issue,” Bergeron said.

A full-scale search of the citizenship files of Orange County’s voters is central to the effort by Dornan to nullify Sanchez’s 984-vote victory last November. Dornan blamed his loss on what he described as widespread voting by noncitizens and illegal immigrants.

A limited search by Jones and the INS in March determined that in the 46th Congressional District race, 490 people registered to vote before they were citizens and 303 of them voted unlawfully.

The House Oversight Committee has not decided on Dornan’s request for a new election. Only a full vote by the House of Representatives could authorize a new election.

Dornan’s lawyers said they hoped the added weight of Congress would compel the INS to act.

“Oh, beautiful,” Bill Hart, Dornan’s lawyer, said Friday when he learned of Thomas’ request. “We will get to the bottom of it and find out what happened.”

Sanchez backers criticized Thomas, saying a search of the type he was requesting would violate the privacy rights of tens of thousands of Orange County voters. Latino interest groups and civil rights organizations have also called the request intrusive.

“They are trying to intimidate U.S. citizens from exercising their right to vote,” said Steve Jost, Sanchez’s chief of staff.

Jost said he didn’t see the need for Thomas to check the citizenship of all county voters unless he harbored a hidden agenda. The 46th Congressional District, which comprises mainly Anaheim, Garden Grove and Santa Ana, with parts of other cities, is one of six including Orange County residents.

“The Republicans are biased against new citizens,” Jost said.

A spokesman for Thomas in Washington declined to comment.

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In his letter, Thomas stressed that the House has the exclusive authority, spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, to judge the elections of its own members. He said the committee needed INS cooperation to evaluate Dornan’s claims.

Thomas said he wanted to determine “how many noncitizens may have illegally registered and voted in the November 1996 general election.”

“Widespread election fraud could have affected the outcome of the November 1996 election for Congress,” he added.

Thomas said he wanted records on all county voters because of what he described as difficulties the INS would have in verifying the citizenship of voters in the 46th Congressional District only.

“The Committee is aware of the difficulties that may be involved with identifying residents of only one congressional district,” Thomas wrote.

Secretary of State Jones, a Republican, applauded Thomas’ efforts.

“I think the requests are legitimate,” he said.

Tony Miller, former acting secretary of state and a Democrat, said that INS records had proved so unreliable when his administration conducted routine checks that they would not answer the committee’s questions.

“The INS’ records are often flawed, outdated and wrong in their information,” Miller said. “They are going to cast a net and catch a lot of innocent people.”

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The secretary of state and the Orange County district attorney’s office are cooperating in an investigation into allegations of voter fraud. Their investigation is focused on Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Santa Ana-based Latino rights organization that helped register about 1,160 people, most of whom were taking citizenship courses there.

With the help of the INS, the secretary of state determined that 721 of those people countywide registered to vote before completing the citizenship process. Jones said 303 of those voted unlawfully in the 46th District.

Lawyers for Sanchez testified that the 303 is overstated, because 124 of those people, although they registered to vote too early, had become citizens by election day.

In addition, they say their investigators have found that many of the people named by the INS as noncitizens have in fact been citizens for years.

They say the congressional committee will face the same sorts of hurdles.

“You would have to go door to door and check these people,” said Fred Woocher, a Sanchez lawyer.