Antonovich Wants Annual Cross-Checks of Votors, Jurors

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who has called for a grand jury investigation into the recent findings that more than 1,000 Los Angeles voters declared they were noncitizens to avoid jury duty, plans to introduce a motion next week to ask for cross-checks of juror-response files and voter rolls every year, a spokesman for the supervisor said Wednesday.

Currently, checks are conducted by the county registrar-recorder every three years.

Recently, Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack purged 1,020 people from voter rolls after they declared they were aliens in a survey of 5,291 people who were excused from jury service by claiming noncitizenship. The details of the probe were included in an interim report to the board of supervisors dated Dec. 12.

McCormack conducted the cross-check of juror-response files as part of an ongoing effort to check voter rolls for fraud.

Antonovich spokesman Cam Currier said the supervisor is still crafting a motion he intends to put before the supervisors Monday, asking that the registrar-recorder conduct the checks every year. The checks should be completed by August so that noncitizens would be removed from the rolls before the November election, he said.

“A person cannot claim to be a noncitizen to avoid jury duty and claim to be a citizen and vote,” Currier said. “The person who is claiming both is lying to someone, either to the registrar or the D.A.’s office.”

McCormack said last week that 181 of the 1,020 might have voted in the November election, but that is not definite, she said, because the data need further analysis. She has urged county officials not to jump to conclusions about the numbers because the information comes from an incomplete survey of about 5,000 people out of more than 3 million voters.