House Panel Seeks O.C. Records in Vote Probe

House Oversight Committee staff members will be in Orange County today to begin copying records at the Orange County registrar’s office as part of the panel’s investigation into the contested 46th Congressional District election, officials said.

Originally scheduled to arrive Wednesday, two staffers were delayed a day in arriving from Washington, a panel spokesman said.

The committee is seeking copies of records that contain signatures of 4,762 people who might not have been citizens at the time they registered to vote, officials said. The committee has also discussed obtaining records containing signatures from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

House spokesman Jason Poblete declined comment on whether the panel would seek to match the handwriting on the two sets of documents to help determine who was ineligible to vote in the 1996 election. But sources have said it is likely the committee will use the signatures for just that purpose. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) defeated incumbent Robert K. Dornan by 984 votes in the contest.

Deputy Registrar Don Taylor said it was not possible to estimate how long it will take for the visiting staffers to copy the nearly 5,000 documents the House panel wants from the registrar.

Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever had earlier told a lawyer for the House committee that it could take two months to complete the work.

“They are going to make copies of voter affidavits,” which are kept on optical disks, he said. Registrar staff will instruct the congressional staffers how to identify and locate the disks that contain the voter affidavits they are seeking, Taylor said.

“Every affidavit is on a disk,” Taylor said. “Once you find the correct disk, you put it in the machine, bring up the affidavit you want and print it.”