Agencies Reach an Agreement on Voter Probe

The INS and the California secretary of state have reached agreement on how to proceed with the search for Orange County voters who illegally took part in last November’s election, the agencies announced Friday.

The signed pact ends a three-month standoff between the federal and state agencies over Secretary of State Bill Jones’ request for citizenship checks of all of Orange County’s 1.3 million voters.

Under the agreement, the INS will first verify the citizenship of 190,456 registered voters countywide.

The focus will be limited to two categories: approximately 190,000 voter registrants who signed up through affidavits checked out of the county registrar’s office to third parties, such as those who organized voter registration drives; and about 456 who refused to serve on a jury by claiming they are not citizens, even though they are registered to vote.

Not until the INS manually searches the citizenship records of suspected illegal voters will the state turn over the findings to the Orange County district attorney’s office, which also is investigating voter fraud.

The INS has just completed for Congress a record-by-record check of 4,023 names on the 46th Congressional District’s voter rolls that appear to match names of noncitizens on INS computers. INS officials say the information is unreliable and probably will have to be further verified by having officials go door-to-door in Orange County to check on the citizenship status of each individual.

*

The INS has similar concerns about the verification of the secretary of state’s request too, but in its memorandum of understanding, the agencies agreed to the categories of registered voters to be examined, how the information would be collected by both agencies and how the information would be used afterward to protect the privacy of the voters. In addition, the secretary of state’s office said it would follow up by interviewing those whose citizenship status still remains in question after the review.

The review of voter rolls was prompted by allegations by former Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan that he lost the 46th District seat to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) due to voter fraud by noncitizens.

The agreement between the INS and the state elections office “is really a prioritization” of the fraud search, said Alfie Charles, a spokesman for Jones. “It does not preclude the entire [1.3-million voter] list, but what it does do is allow us to focus energy on those people we have identified as the problem.”

“We want to identify if there’s a pattern where individuals or organizations convinced other people to register illegally,” Charles added.

For the INS, this week’s written agreement scales down the request to look at the citizenship status of all 1.3 million voters in Orange County, avoiding what the federal agency claims to be a cumbersome, time-consuming and costly exercise.

The agreement was signed on Wednesday but not publicly released until Friday.

Eric Andrus, an INS spokesman, said the agreement “continues the INS cooperation with the entities that are investigating this particular election.

“We have been pleased by some compliments on our cooperation, especially by the [Orange County] district attorney,” he said. “We want to replicate that [cooperation] with the congressional committee.”

Initially, attention on voter fraud was focused on Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Latino rights group that conducts voter-registration drives. The Orange County organization was found by the secretary of state to have signed up more than 700 people before they became citizens. The state agency found 456 unlawful registrants who voted.

*

In the Sanchez congressional district, Jones found 490 illegal registrations, including 303 who actually voted.

A separate search by Jones found 456 people throughout the county who claimed exemption from jury service by saying they are not citizens.

Expansion of the citizenship checks to those who were registered to vote by “third party” organizations--beyond the Latino advocacy group--will draw in political parties, civic organizations, schools and others that sponsored voter-registration drives, Charles said.

“The reason is that we have found problems with a lot of bounty hunters throughout the state who get paid for [each] voter registration,” Charles added.