Vote Panel Presses Demand for INS Data

WASHINGTON — The congressional committee overseeing former Rep. Robert K. Dornan’s contentions of voter fraud is preparing to subpoena the INS to check the citizenship of all of Orange County’s 1.3 million voters, congressional sources said Tuesday.

The House Oversight Committee plans to decide today whether to compel the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to turn over citizenship records for all the county’s voters. The committee staff was said to be drafting the subpoenas late Tuesday.

The computer check is central to investigating Dornan’s contention that he lost his congressional seat in November to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) because of widespread voting by noncitizens and illegal immigrants.

Such a search is unprecedented, and the INS has expressed reservations about carrying it out.

Steve Jost, Sanchez’s chief of staff, said the congresswoman had been informed of the subpoena proposal Tuesday by House Oversight Committee member Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md).

“The subpoenas are likely to be for computer records,” Jost said.

Still, it remained unclear Tuesday whether the committee would demand that the INS turn over its raw computer tapes, or that it simply provide answers to the committee’s questions.

Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield), the committee chairman, asked the INS two weeks ago to perform the computer checks. Last week, after the INS had failed to provide an answer, Thomas publicly complained about the agency.

Thomas said at the time that if the INS would not do the checks, the House Oversight Committee would take the agency’s computer tapes and do it.

The INS has told Thomas it may not have the capability to perform the computer checks in part because the limitations of the agency’s data may not allow positive identification of noncitizen voters.

For example, the INS does not keep data on native-born U.S. citizens, nor does it have data on many immigrants who have come to the U.S. illegally.

INS spokesman Eric Andrus said Tuesday the agency was trying to comply with the committee’s request, but he still could not say whether it could.

Dornan, who lost to Sanchez by 984 votes, is asking Congress to nullify the election results and hold a new election. The House Oversight Committee, comprising five Republicans and three Democrats, will probably decide at a later date whether Dornan has a case.

If a majority of the members believe that Dornan deserves a new election, they would make a recommendation to the House of Representatives. The full House would have to vote to approve a new election.

To date, Dornan has fallen short of proving that he lost because of election fraud. California Secretary of State Bill Jones has determined that 303 people registered to vote before they were citizens and then voted in the 46th Congressional race. Their votes would be invalid, Jones said.