Mexican standoff

National Review, Feb 10, 1997 by Harold Johnson

Whatever the district attorney turns up might prove of interest to the House Oversight Committee, which will consider Dornan's complaint contesting the election result. Some Dornan partisans worry that he won't get a fair hearing from the committee's chairman, Bill Thomas, a rogue liberal Republican who who has often been at odds with right-of-center California politicians. But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the solid conservative whose district hugs Orange County's northern coastline, professes confidence: "When it comes to defending the integrity of House procedures, and voting procedures, I haven't seen anybody fiercer than Thomas."

Much of the spadework that brought ballot irregularities to light was done by the Fair Elections Group, a good-government organization in Torrance, California, with patented software for analyzing registration lists and polling results. The organization in the past has uncovered the presence of dogs, cats, and dead humans on Southern California registration rolls.

For its investigation into the recent Orange County elections, Fair Elections has been slammed in OC Weekly, the county's left-leaning "alternative" tabloid, as a Republican front group. That's a hard argument to make, considering that Karen Saranita, who heads Fair Elections, is a former Democratic staffer for the state Senate.

She tells me she wouldn't vote for Dornan. But she'll be happy if his challenge creates momentum for changing the state's "honor" system under which it is prohibited to ask a would-be voter for identification.

"As the mother of an 11-year-old," she says, "I don't like the idea of my vote being canceled out by a cocker spaniel's." Or, she might have added, by that of the son or daughter of a foreign flag.