CALIFORNIA Paper's probe reveals hundreds duped into registering with Republican Party

The secretary of state is looking into the possibility of fraud charges.
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SANTA ANA, Calif. -- More than 100 Orange County residents who thought they were simply signing petitions to cure breast cancer, punish child molesters or build schools were duped into registering as Republicans, an Orange County Register investigation found.
The ruse took place over several days in December and January at shopping centers throughout Anaheim, Santa Ana, Buena Park, Westminster and Garden Grove, where paid petitioners begged, cajoled, lied and committed forgery, to get so-called Republican converts. Petition circulators were paid as much as $7 for each GOP registration.
Orange County election officials have received complaints from 167 people who were flipped to the Republican Party without their permission. The Register found the problem was far wider, interviewing 112 others who were not only switched, but also tricked and deceived. Among the victims is a lifelong Democrat who was pressured to fill out forms even though she didn't have her glasses and couldn't see what she was signing.
The Register traced the bogus registrations to Christopher Scott Dinoff, who took out 13,000 blank affidavit cards from the Orange County Registrar of Voters office, records show. Each affidavit is numbered, linking Dinoff to the doctored cards.
Dinoff, who was fired from the Orange County Republican registration drive, declined to comment. It is unlikely that he acted alone since professional petition-circulators such as Dinoff usually hire other people to help harvest signatures.
Probe possible
"I think they need to be punished," said Ericka Lopez of Anaheim, who said she was unwillingly switched from Libertarian to Republican in January. "We were deceived."
California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is looking into the allegations of voter registration fraud in Orange County, as well as in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, where hundreds of complaints have been linked to a petitioner identified as John Burkett. A spokeswoman for McPherson declined to comment on the Register's findings.
In Orange County, local GOP chairman Scott Baugh said he considers his party a victim in the scam.
"Not only do we get hit for the dollars we are paying vendors, but if they are reluctant Republicans, we are also wasting money on follow-up mailers and efforts to contact [them]," Baugh said.
Virtually all the victims interviewed by the Register told the same story:
They were asked to sign petitions while shopping. Without realizing it, they also signed voter registration cards listing their party designation as Republican. When pressed for an explanation, signature-gatherers said they needed to list people that way because it was a Republican-sponsored petition. They said it wouldn't change the party affiliation. Sometimes petitioners told victims to leave blank the box designating party.
Dinoff was hired by a subcontractor for Bader and Associates, the Newport Beach consultant used by the GOP to conduct the registration drive.
What was done
Consultant Tom Bader said his firm tries to weed out bad registrations by analyzing the forms, looking for patterns that could indicate fraud. Bader said none was found. He added that the only group that profits from forged registrations are the street-level bounty hunters.
"I don't believe any companies would do it intentionally," Bader said. "They'd be nutty to try anything like that."
Orange County Republican officials say they took immediate action when they learned of "over-aggressive" petitioners, refusing to pay for any more registrations from Dinoff and Burkett.
But Frank Barbaro, Orange County Democratic Party chairman, isn't so sure that the Republican Party is blameless. Barbaro said the GOP benefited because the boosted numbers strengthened the party's fund-raising ability in the heated 34th District.
"It gives the Republicans all this energy," Barbaro said. "They take those numbers around the state and raise money, saying, 'We can win that district.'"