Voter registrations under review

The Record ^ | April 11, 2004 | David Siders

[w1andsodidwe]

16 cards sent to state investigators

A dead Republican was registered as a Democrat in a San Joaquin County voter-fraud case, one of hundreds of voter registrations being reviewed by the county's registrar of voters.

Helen Seymour had been dead six months when she was registered in March, county records show.

The ongoing review could result in criminal charges against Deborah DuBrutz and Bonnie Fetters, both of Stockton, registrar Deborah Hench said.

County elections officials have mailed state investigators 16 registration cards that the two women submitted, Hench said. Some cards registered Republican voters as Democrats. Some contained altered birth dates and names.

DuBrutz and Fetters gathered registrations outside grocery and department stores while working for the Statewide Voter Registration Project, a nonprofit corporation that registers Democrats in California.

All registrations that the Voter Registration Project submitted are being reviewed, including registrations from workers other than DuBrutz and Fetters, Hench said Saturday.

Both DuBrutz and Fetters confirmed collecting and submitting the registration cards that the county has forwarded to state investigators but said they did not fabricate information on them.

"I'm not going to turn criminal for $8 an hour," DuBrutz said.

Cigarettes and dollar bills perhaps tempted passers-by to give false names, the women said.

Fetters said she traded dollar bills and half and whole packages of Doral menthol cigarettes for voter registrations from passers-by. DuBrutz, the woman who registered Seymour, said she traded GPC 100 cigarettes, sodas and bandannas for registrations.

Both Fetters, 47, and DuBrutz, 33, said they also bought registration cards colleagues had completed in order to expand their own registration rolls. :::

Fetters said two of the registration cards mailed to state investigators are ones she bought from a colleague.

Such actions are illegal, Hench said.

But Fetters and DuBrutz said their mistakes do not constitute election fraud.

"I'm not proud of myself," Fetters said. "I didn't like having to buy votes (registrations)."

Explaining their actions, both women said Voter Registration Project managers required more signatures than could be collected without sometimes trading goods for registrations.

The Voter Registration Project, which pays registration workers $8 per hour, does not have registration quotas for its employees, statewide director Jerry Wooledge said.

It does, however, expect them to work, he said.

State investigators could forward a case against Fetters and DuBrutz to the San Joaquin County district attorney, Hench said.

DuBrutz and Fetters, incidentally, were clerks at county polling places during the March 2 election. The women were not regular employees at the office of the registrar of voters and will not work at polling places again, Hench said.

Fraudulent registrations did not affect the election, she said.

Fraudulent registrations, however, have affected Hench.

"I just want to cry," she said.

County elections officials opened the fraud investigation after an employee discovered incorrect cards registering a Linden couple known to the employee, Hench said.

"There are so many others (registration cards) we are still trying to determine if they are genuine or not," she said in a letter to the state Elections Fraud Investigations Unit.

The Voter Registration Project in March fired Fetters, a certified public accountant.

DuBrutz now registers voters for Vance Petition Circulators of Stockton. She said she checks identification cards before registering voters.

"I'm a good girl," she said.

Tom Gray of Vance Petition Circulators said DuBrutz has been a good worker. She was honest about her past, he said.

"She made no bones about it when she came in," he said.

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* To reach reporter David Siders, phone (209) 943-8580 or e-mail dsiders@recordnet.com

[jmstein7]

It depends on how well we could control the debate.