San Bernardino County prosecutors are investigating a signature collection firm that submitted thousands of flawed voter registration forms on behalf of the county's Republican Party, authorities said.
The district attorney's public integrity unit launched an investigation after the registrar of voters received complaints from people who said they had been improperly registered as Republicans during a recent GOP registration drive.
County voting officials said they found problems with many of the nearly 3,000 registration forms submitted by the company, including 1,800 that lacked voters' driver's license numbers or other official forms of identification, which were required by a state law this year.
The district attorney's office is also investigating whether the same political firm, John Burkett Petition Management of Riverside, was responsible for the large number of signatures declared invalid in a recent petition drive in Rialto, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Frank Vanella.
County GOP officials said they had severed ties with the owner of the firm, John Burkett, who had run the party's registration drive since January.
Burkett said Monday that the allegations seemed "impossible" and that he only recently became aware of the state law requiring official documentation numbers on the forms.
"For somebody to pop up and say 3,000 are bad ... it sounds kind of incredible," he said.
Burkett has run his company -- with more than 100 signature-gatherers in Riverside and Arizona -- for nearly two decades, contracting mainly with Republican organizations.
"I know John verifies every voter registration that comes across his desk," said his sister-in-law Barbara Burkett, who runs the firm's Arizona office. "He calls the person. He's honest like you wouldn't believe. He'd never cheat at all."
Republicans have aggressively courted voters in rapidly growing San Bernardino County.
They hold a registration edge over Democrats, 42% to 38%, and hold four of five seats on the Board of Supervisors.
Burkett said he had worked with the county GOP since 2000. His firm is paid for each voter registration form it collects, usually $3. But the San Bernardino County Republican Party recently offered $6 for each GOP voter registered in the San Bernardino and Ontario areas, said party officials.
