Allegations of voter registration fraud rankle nonprofit voter groups

STEPHANIE V. SIEK

Associated Press   12 October 2004

ST. LOUIS - A suburban St. Louis Republican committeeman asked the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners to investigate voter registration efforts by nonprofit groups linked to the Democratic party Tuesday. But the groups said his petition is merely an attempt to disenfranchise new voters.

Neal Breitweiser, of the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur, submitted a petition with more than 1,400 signatures calling for the board to investigate registrations collected by the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition, America Coming Together, and MoveOn.org. He said he was acting as a concerned voter, not as part of the Republican party, but a news release announcing the petition was on Republican party stationery.

"What the petition is about is making sure that everyone's vote is counted and that their vote is not voided by an illegally registered participant," said Breitweiser.

Breitweiser said he decided to act after seeing a local television news report that "hundreds" of voter registrations collected by the voter organizations were "trashed" because they were found to be fraudulent.

The election board said it had not announced anything to that effect and had not been "trashing" registrations. The county's Republican director of elections, David Welch, said that out of about 40,000 total registrations collected since the August primaries, about 9,000 were duplications. He said that number was not unusual considering that it was an election year and more people were registering.

Welch said he did not know if the questioned registrations involved any of the voter registration groups. He said the county board does not track that data.

The duplications didn't necessarily indicate fraud, Welch said. He said there were legitimate reasons why people might show up twice in the voter rolls - for example, if a woman who had married or divorced had changed her name, or if someone re-registered after being unsure of whether their voter information was d with a new address.

Sara Howard, America Coming Together's Missouri spokeswoman, said the organization hadn't been contacted by any election boards about fraudulent voter registrations.

"The bottom line is that the Republican party is concerned about there being so many new voters in this election because they think that will hurt their chances of winning in November," said Howard.

Missouri ProVote's executive director, John Hickey, dismissed Breitweiser's claims as "baseless." He said many of the new registrations were from black voters, a traditionally Democratic voting bloc, and the accusations were aimed at suppressing those votes.

"Every time you see African-Americans getting registered, you see the Republican party making bogus charges instead of welcoming them to the political process," Hickey said.

Breitweiser denied that his allegations targeted black registrants.

Howard and Hickey said Republican groups have levied similar allegations against their groups before, without proof.

The Associated Press reported in June that nearly three-fourths of the registrations collected by the voter groups in St. Louis city since last July were valid.

Before the news conference at which Breitweiser planned to announce the petition, an impromptu rally was held by about three dozen volunteers from America Coming Together, Missouri ProVote, and the Service Employees International Union.

Carrying signs and chanting "Count every vote," the volunteers nearly drowned out about half a dozen Breitweiser supporters, who held signs reading "Dogs shouldn't vote" - apparently in reference to rumors that the groups had registered people's pets.

Missouri Republican Party spokesman Paul Sloca said the signatures on the petition were collected from St. Louis County residents. But Welch said that the copy he was given had signatures from around the country, including Lee's Summit, Mo., Houston, Texas; Boston, and Highland, Ill.

Welch said the board planned to continue its established procedure of triple checking individual voter registration cards and then checking them against computer records.

Welch and Democratic director of elections Judy Taylor said that any allegations of fraud would be referred to the county prosecutor, because the board has neither the authority nor resources to investigate Breitweiser's claims.