1,020 Names Deleted From Voter Rolls

In an ongoing investigation into possible voter fraud by noncitizens, the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder reported Friday that she has removed 1,020 names from voter rolls as the result of a survey of people who got out of jury service by claiming not to be citizens.

Registrar-Recorder Conny B. McCormack said the survey probed three years’ worth of juror response files, checking 5,291 names against voter registration rolls as part of an ongoing effort to spot-check the rolls for fraud.

Details of the probe, which is in the preliminary stages, were included in an interim report to the Board of Supervisors dated Dec. 12, and immediately touched off a flurry of speculation and concern. Supervisor Mike Antonovich promptly called for a grand jury investigation, saying that the report is the “tip of the iceberg” of voter fraud in Los Angeles.

But it was not immediately clear what the numbers mean.

McCormack said surveyors had only taken people’s word on their citizenship status and had not yet checked whether, for instance, some may have simply claimed noncitizenship to avoid the courts. Lying on a juror service form is against the law.

Moreover, McCormack said, it was not known definitively whether any of the noncitizens had actually voted. She said that raw, unanalyzed data showed that 181 of the 1,020 may have cast ballots in the November election, but that number was not firm.

In an earlier report to the supervisors, McCormack wrote that some of the noncitizens informed her staff that they had never registered and did not know how their names got on the voter rolls.

“Some stated that they had been told by other persons that they were eligible to vote,” the Dec. 2. memo said.

With more than 3 million registered voters and only a partially completed survey of about 5,000, McCormack urged caution in jumping to conclusions.

“I think it is a problem, but the extent of the problem is undetermined,” McCormack said, adding that her office will forward the results of the inquiry to local prosecutors and state elections officials. A spokesman for Supervisor Gloria Molina said she is out of town and has not seen the report. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said he has not read it either so could not comment.

Registration irregularities in Orange County led to a massive check of records and an ongoing investigation by California Secretary of State Bill Jones.

After The Times reported that dozens of noncitizens had registered to vote in Los Angeles County in the 1996 elections, Jones opened an ongoing investigation.

McCormack’s office has conducted regular purges of voter registrations. In 1996, she pushed successfully for striking more than 700 names from Los Angeles County voter rolls that had been erroneously registered at DMV offices.

Times staff writer Efrain Hernandez Jr. contributed to this story.