Rights Groups Contend Inquiry Will Intimidate Minority Voters

WASHINGTON — The congressional probe into voting by noncitizens last November in Orange County will intimidate minority voters and undermine federal and state laws designed to increase voter participation, a coalition of national civil rights groups charged Friday.

Attacking congressional efforts to police noncitizen voting, the nine-member coalition directed most of its criticism at the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating allegations of voter fraud in Orange County’s 46th Congressional District.

A spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, Cecilia Munoz, called the search for illegal voters a “witch hunt of ethnic voters,” because voter rolls are being checked against inaccurate data stored in the computers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Anticipating the criticism, House Committee Chairman Bill Thomas sent the coalition a letter on Thursday, in which he maintained that the House panel is not being anti-ethnic.

“I completely reject and am offended by your accusation that the committee’s process is designed to intimidate and frighten prospective ethnic voters,” said Thomas (R-Bakersfield.)

“Your implication that this committee intends to intimidate or frighten legal voters is offensive and does a disservice to the groups that you purport to represent,” the letter stated.

The House began the investigation after former Orange County congressman Robert K. Dornan filed an election protest, claiming that he lost to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) because of noncitizen voting. Dornan lost the race by 984 votes.

With Dornan now prohibited from issuing subpoenas in his own search for invalid ballots, the probe will rely on information produced by the INS.

The INS has been subpoenaed to turn over to the House panel by next week its comparison of voters in the congressional district against 4,023 names in INS files which may be possible matches. But the INS has repeatedly warned the committee that the list will not determine whether the names belong to illegal voters.

For example, a native-born American in Orange County who is registered to vote may share the name and birth date of a “legal resident alien” to produce a match, the INS said. Only by knocking on doors in Orange County would investigators find out that the same name belonged to two different people.

The immigrant who takes the oath of citizenship and is investigated because he voted, will shy away from voting again, Munoz said. “What you have is fear and intimidation among voters,” she said.

The coalition also attacked the proposed “Voter Eligibility Verification Act,” sponsored by Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach), which would let local election officials check with the Social Security Administration and the INS to verify the citizenship of people registering to vote.

A spokesman for Horn said the bill, to be considered next week by a House Judiciary subcommittee, includes specific safeguards against discrimination and violations of privacy.

“It explicitly does not authorize a ‘national ID card,’ ” according to a statement from Horn’s office.

But the civil rights leaders disagreed with that assessment, adding that the social security data base, like the INS records, cannot provide accurate information on citizenship.

The proposed law “leaves an enormous amount of discretion in the hands of local registrars” who could ultimately decide a voter’s eligibility, added Todd Cox, of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Under Law.

“Given this country’s history of discrimination in voter registration, these decisions could be made based on the race or language of the individual registrants,” Cox said.

Members of the civil rights groups warned that the congressional action could undo the so-called “Motor Voter” law, which requires states to offer voter registration by mail or when citizens get driver’s licenses.

A recent report by the Federal Election Commission found that voter registrations in 1996 among voting age population reached its highest mark since 1960, when records first became available.

The number of new voters within the Latino population also showed a significant increase, indicating the growing potential of the minority vote, the civil rights leaders said.