County complaint fuels voter fraud probe 

JOHN SOWELL  Oregon News Review

October 14, 2004

Oregon elections officials have opened an investigation into allegations that some voter registration cards including those collected by canvassers in Roseburg may not have been turned in.

In addition, a Glide woman has filed a complaint with the Douglas County Clerk's Office alleging that her husband had been pressured by paid registration canvassers to register as a Republican.

"People have called and said they were pushy," County Clerk Barbara Nielsen said.

Leanne Adalia said she had bugged her husband, David Smith, for two years to register to vote. While they were shopping Sunday at Sherm's Thunderbird, Smith decided to sign up at a table set up outside the Roseburg grocery store.

Smith filled out the form, marking the box to establish himself as an independent, unaffiliated with any political party. Afterward, the two men manning the table two brothers who said they were working for the state of Oregon asked him to write down his choice for president on the form, Adalia said.

"That's a really strange thing to ask," Adalia said.

Smith, who is working in Washington state this week and was unavailable for comment, declined the request.

The next day, after reading a newspaper story detailing how canvassers working for an Arizona company working on behalf of the Republican National Committee were being paid to sign up voters, Adalia and Smith became suspicious. In light of the exchange with the men who signed up Smith, they wondered whether his registration form would be turned in, since he hadn't registered as a Republican.

They returned to the registration table outside Sherm's but two different men were there that day. They confirmed, though, that all four men worked for Sproul & Associates, the Arizona company mentioned in the news story. They were given the men's names, which Adalia, who is registered as a Democrat, provided in her complaint.

The Secretary of State's office received the complaint Wednesday, along with one from Portland alleging a similar violation, spokeswoman Norma Buckno said. A paid canvasser told a KGW-TV reporter that he was told only to accept registrations from Republicans and that he "might" destroy those from Democrats.

Douglas County elections officials are working to process several hundred voter registration cards turned in before Tuesday's deadline. It may take workers through the weekend to add those new registrations to the county's voter rolls, Nielsen said.

Until then, it's impossible to tell whether any registration cards filled out at an outside table were thrown away. The first hint will likely be when a voter doesn't receive a ballot, which go out in the mail beginning Friday.

Luckily, for Smith, he stopped by the Lane County elections office while he was in Eugene on Monday and filled out a second form. No registration form has been processed for him yet, but county officials are still receiving registration forms from other counties.

As of this morning, the county's rolls showed 65,689 registered voters. Since the May primary, 3,774 new voters have signed up to vote in the Nov. 2 general election. Overall, 73.9 percent of the estimated 88,856 adults who reside in Douglas County are registered to vote.

Republicans lead in registrations with 29,145, while county Democrats number 21,714. Another 14,830 are registered as independents or members of minor parties.

Of the registrations processed this week, there has been a mixture in about the same proportions as the overall numbers, Nielsen said. There doesn't appear to be any large-scale increase in the number of Republican voters versus others.

"We're getting Democrats, Republicans and non-affiliated voters," Nielsen said.

If it turns out there were voters who filled out registration cards that weren't turned in, they won't have any recourse, Buckno said. They won't be allowed to vote in this election.

"They take a chance by registering with people on the street," she said. "If they have any inkling that it wouldn't be turned in, they should have gone to the (county) elections office itself."

An unknown number of completed registration cards are being sent today from Portland, where they were turned in to the Multnomah County elections office. Nielsen said she suspects those might be from students at Portland State University or other metro colleges. She said a large number of new registrations typically come from counties with colleges.

County and state elections officials declined to release a copy of the complaint filed in Roseburg. Buckno said it was a criminal matter that would be investigated by the state Department of Justice.

The company employing the Roseburg canvassers is owned by Nathan Sproul, a former head of the Republican Party in Arizona. His company has been paid $488,000 by the Republican National Committee for outreach efforts in several states, the Washington Post reported today.

A paid canvasser working for Sproul was accused of destroying registration forms filled out by voters in Nevada. The company denied the allegation, saying there was "no destruction of any voter registration forms."

The former employee who made the charges in Las Vegas was fired more than two weeks ago, the company said.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee issued a statement Wednesday that said its party has a "zero-tolerance policy for anything that smacks of impropriety in registering voters."

In Oregon, tampering with or throwing away a voter registration form is a Class C felony. It is punishable by five years in prison and/or a $100,000 fine.

Last month in Medford, a librarian was approached by a group claiming to be affiliated with the progressive, nonpartisan America Votes organization, with a request to set up registration booths in the library.

A librarian who looked into the request found out the group was part of Sproul & Associates and had nothing to do with America Votes.