Signs of Voter Fraud Appear - LA Times News

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THE RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

Signs of Voter Fraud Appear

Registrations that

are faked or tossed out have emerged in key states

struggling to comply with ballot reform and a flood of new signups.

 

By Richard Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian,

Times Staff Writers

 

 

 

LAS VEGAS — Broke, disabled and living at the Daisy Motel in downtown

Las Vegas, Tyrone Mrasek Sr. took a temporary job late this summer

registering voters here.

 

The employer primarily wanted President Bush supporters, but they were

not easy to find. So Mrasek handed out cigarettes to drunks and

ex-felons at a homeless shelter in exchange for signatures. Later he

found a stack of signed registrations for Democratic voters in a trash

can outside the company's office, he recalled.

 

 

"They had some shady things going on," Mrasek said.

 

Partisan registration drives have swept through battleground states

such as Nevada, Ohio and New Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of new

registrations have poured into county and state offices and strained

the systems in these states.

 

But as workers closely examined

some forms, they found clear cases of fraud. In some instances, stacks

of registrations had the same handwriting. In others, names were lifted

from phone books and signatures forged. And many of the new

registrations were duplicates of already registered voters.

 

Financed by political parties, wealthy advocacy groups and grass-roots

organizations, liberal and conservative organizations have spent

hundreds of millions of dollars to register voters. The crush, along

with the irregular registrations, have bred chaos across the nation.

 

"We were getting stacks of forms with identical handwriting," said

Harvard L. Lomax, registrar of voters in Clark County here. "We were

getting calls from people wanting to know why they were getting

registration forms when they hadn't asked for one. If you went to a DMV

office over the last five months, you were mobbed by people trying to

register you, claiming they were working for us. It was obvious it was

fraud."

 

The presidential outcome is expected to be very close,

and voter registration fraud could well become this year's hanging

chad. If so, it will be an issue that the losing party can seize upon

to argue in the courts that the election was flawed.

 

After the

disputed 2000 presidential election, new federal rules were supposed to

ensure that registration lists were more accurate and current. Congress

passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, requiring every state to have

a computerized statewide registration list that would be instantly

updated with each new registration.

 

But 37 states have failed

to meet the new standards and sought waivers from the federal

government, said Rebecca Vigil-Giron, secretary of state in New Mexico

and president of the association that represents other secretaries.

 

"A lot of states do not have good data systems," she said.

 

California officials are relying on an older registration computer

system but hope to have a new list by 2006 that complies with federal

law. It will cost $40 million to implement, said Tony Miller, special

counsel to the secretary of state.

 

Many state officials

acknowledge that their systems and laws need to be tightened. Under

Oregon law, for example, outside organizations can hire temporary

workers and pay them for each new registration. In Nevada, temporary

workers may be paid by the hour but not for individual registrations.

 

"You are creating incentives for fraud if you pay by the signature,"

said Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury.

 

In Alabama, counties have a big backlog of last-minute registrations,

and discrepancies in the records have left them unsure how many voters

are on the rolls. Last week, Anita Tatum, director of the office of

voter registration, resigned after she could not explain the

discrepancies.

 

In Ohio, the Republican Party is challenging

about 25,000 new registrations. David Beckwith, a GOP spokesman in

Ohio, said there were a number of "Democratic front groups" holding

registration drives in the region and that "the fraud accusations have

been worse than in 40 years."

 

He said multiple Democratic

registration forms were signed "in the same hand," Democratic

signatures were traded for "cash or crack cocaine," and a woman's

husband, dead for 20 years, was registered in the Cleveland area.

 

"This has been sloppy and haphazard," Beckwith said.

 

Liberal groups such as America Coming Together, formed in 2003 with

300,000 donors, amassed a $125-million budget for registering voters,

spokeswoman Sara Leonard said. Much of the money flowed down to local

organizations that hired temporary workers. Another liberal group,

America Votes, a coalition of 33 organizations led by powerful unions

and environmental groups, built up a $400-million budget, part of which

went to registrations.

 

Meanwhile, the Republican National

Committee has funded one company at the center of allegations, Voter

Outreach of America Inc., which is active in Las Vegas and across the

nation. It was set up by Nathan Sproul, former chairman of the Arizona

Republican Party.

 

Mrasek, who is disabled with emphysema,

said he and his son spotted a newspaper ad for the Sproul group. The

younger Mrasek, who also is disabled and lives with his father at the

Daisy Motel, bowed out when he learned the emphasis was to register GOP

voters.

 

His father took the Sproul job, which paid about $8 an

hour and allowed workers to go home early with full pay on days they

managed to register 18 Republicans.

 

Mrasek said he was given a

written script to ask people whether they favored Bush or Sen. John F.

Kerry. To those favoring the Massachusetts senator, Mrasek replied that

he was just taking a poll and thanked them for stopping.

 

But

for those who liked Bush, Mrasek offered to register them. "George Bush

really needs your help this election," he said he was told to say.

 

In predominantly Democratic Las Vegas, however, Mrasek had a hard time

finding unregistered Republicans, he said. One day, he registered

himself and his son as Republicans to meet his quota, though he opposes

Bush's Iraq policies and plans to vote for Kerry.

 

Eric Russell,

another temporary employee for the project, also alleged that he saw

Democratic Party registrations thrown in the trash. With legal

assistance from the Democratic Party, he went to court and tried,

unsuccessfully, to reopen registration.

 

Russell, a Republican

who now plans to vote for Kerry, also gave authorities a copy of the

written sales pitch, which said, in part, "Use your training to find

likely Republicans."

 

Sproul denied the allegations. He said he fired Russell and then sued

him, alleging he and the company had been slandered.

 

"Our goal was to register as many supporters of President Bush as we

could. However, we gave very strict instructions to everybody

associated with us that we had a zero tolerance policy if anybody was

destroying, tampering or altering registration forms," he said, adding

that his project turned in more than 500 Democratic registrations in

Nevada.

 

Meanwhile, Republicans say the Democratic registrations submitted by

liberal groups are tainted.

 

Brian Scroggins, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, said

his organization spot-checked some of the new Democratic registration

forms and found that "the first three we looked at" carried home

addresses that actually were vacant lots.

 

"Sure we're upset," Scroggins said.

 

But Sproul also has run into trouble in Oregon, where Secretary of

State Bradbury opened an investigation this month into allegations from

three Sproul employees that the organization had destroyed Democratic

registrations, a felony.

 

And in West Virginia, Lisa Bragg, the

mother of two teenagers desperate for a job, decided against working

for Sproul after seeing a written sales script that flatly declared,

"The goal is to register Republicans."

 

"It was dishonest," said Bragg. "I didn't want to hide in the bushes

and not sign up Democrats."

 

An admitted Democrat, she called the pay "dirty money."

 

With so much acrimony among party officials across the country, local

elections officials feel the heat.

 

"Government officials are certainly under the gun," said Lomax, the

Clark County registrar. "Nobody wants to be the next Florida. If you

are in a swing state like we are and there is a close vote, there will

be litigation."

 

 

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