Registrations questioned in Stupak campaign probe

Tuesday, May 25, 2004 | 10:58 a.m.

The district attorney's office investigated Nevada Stupak's unsuccessful 2002 bid for the Clark County Commission after the Election Department turned over a stack of suspicious voter registration forms, prosecutors and county officials said this morning.

However, the investigation from August to December 2002 did not result in a prosecution of voter registration fraud, Deputy District Attorney Mary Miller said, noting that while there were suspicions about who was responsible, there was not enough evidence to bring a case to court.

Investigators over five months found evidence that homeless people were paid to register to vote and got limousine rides to the polls and that out-of-state dancers signed blank forms they thought were petitions against underage dancing, prosecutors said.

"It looked like an orchestrated effort to register voters using fictitious addresses or fictitious names," Deputy District Attorney Mary Miller said. "But we weren't able to make a case."

In that race, County Commissioner Myrna Williams defeated Stupak, the son of former casino owner Bob Stupak. Bob Stupak also has unsuccessfully run for the County Commission as well as for mayor of Las Vegas.

Nevada Stupak could not be reached for comment this morning.

He is one of 12 candidates for the Ward 2 Las Vegas City Council seat left vacant by Lynette Boggs McDonald, who now is a Clark County Commissioner. A special municipal election is set for June 22.

Miller said her office's investigation could not determine who paid homeless people to register to vote. Nor could investigators determine who paid to take them in limousines to early voting sites. Those homeless people were not allowed to vote because it turned out they were not registered in Williams' district, Miller said.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said all of the questionable voter registration forms were turned in on the same day.

"They obviously were filled out by the same person," Lomax said. "All of those forms were signed out to a group to elect Nevada Stupak."

The forms listed addresses that election officials found to be either abandoned buildings or vacant lots. Letters were sent to the suspicious residences and were returned as undeliverable, thus none of those potential voters made the rolls.

Jim Ferrence, who ran the Williams campaign, said he became aware of the registration forms "several weeks before the primary," but made no formal protest because "our polling showed Nevada Stupak posed no threat."

Stupak had previously lost a bid for the Las Vegas City Council against Gary Reese in 1999.