Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey asserted yesterday that she has enough evidence of voting fraud -- including potentially hundreds of dead voters in Baltimore -- to overturn the results of last month's gubernatorial election.
Mrs. Sauerbrey made her comment four days before she is expected to file suit to try to overturn the results.
With her yesterday at a joint news conference in Towson was U.S. Rep.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who called for a congressional investigation into the election that gave Democrat Parris N. Glendening a paper-thin victory Nov. 8.
"I think this deserves a full and fair investigation," said Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican who predicted that the new GOP leaders in Congress would be eager to look at the Maryland election.
Sauerbrey officials said investigators had found 53 votes cast in Baltimore by people they confirmed were dead. They are checking 280 other likely "dead voters" through obituaries, death certificates and funeral directors.
"This requires further investigation and referral to law-enforcement authorities," said John M. Carbone, a lawyer and election specialist who is leading Mrs. Sauerbrey's election inquiry team. Officials declined to release the names of any "dead voters," citing concerns for survivors' privacy.
The Sauerbrey team continued yesterday to refer to "hundreds" of voters they believe are suspicious, mainly because such voters can't be tracked down through public records by a small army of Sauerbrey investigators. In a few cases, they said, they have found people in whose names votes were cast without their knowledge.
Mrs. Sauerbrey said a certified public accountant working for her, Emoke Antal of Glen Arm, claimed to have found "discrepancies" in the Baltimore certified vote count. The discrepancies, Mr. Antal said, would cut Mr. Glendening's margin of victory by 1,473.
Mrs. Sauerbrey lost to Mr. Glendening by just under 6,000 votes out of 1.4 million cast.
As she has in the past, Mrs. Sauerbrey declined to release specific allegations of fraud. But she said she will present enough evidence for a court to throw out Mr. Glendening's victory and either award the governor's seat to Mrs. Sauerbrey or order a new election.
"Next week, I think we'll see ample evidence that this is not a case of sour grapes or being a sore loser," Mrs. Sauerbrey said. "We think we will have an adequate number [of illegal votes] to affect the outcome of the election."
On Thursday, a Sauerbrey campaign worker flew to Irvine, Calif., to check the names of 30,000 elderly Baltimore voters against a research firm's list of deceased Americans. The list is kept by Cambridge Statistical Research Associates, which sells the information to anyone interested.
"They gave me a list of about 40,000 names, and I found numerous matches. . . . It was in the hundreds," said Louis Cheng, the owner of the business. A Sauerbrey investigator said the actual number was 333, meaning the records show that many people who voted Nov. 8 according to city records, but who are dead according to Mr. Cheng's records.
Mr. Cheng said his computerized list of deceased people was compiled from Social Security data and contains the names of 50 million people who have died in the last 30 years.
Sauerbrey supporters have also been investigating hundreds of cases in which they say people who voted listed their addresses as buildings that had been abandoned or razed.
"I think you will find some indication that some of these people don't even exist," she said.
Searching for voters
Her investigators have used a battery of searches to find city voters, including motor vehicle, police and credit information. In several hundred cases, they said, the voters can't be found.
Seven of the "suspicious" voters' names were given to The Sun last week. Court and motor vehicle records confirmed the existence of all but one of them, although continued efforts to reach them through relatives and neighbors were unsuccessful.
Mr. Glendening's supporters said the allegations of nonexistent voters are a desperate attempt by Mrs. Sauerbrey to raise suspicions.
"Moving is not fraud," said Bruce Marcus, a lawyer who will head Glendening's legal team if a suit is filed.
nTC "If a violation is due to omission or negligence on the part of election officials or on the part of the voter in a statewide election, it would be extremely unusual for a court to exclude the vote of that person," he said.
State and local elections officials have denied that the election was tainted by any large-scale irregularities, and Mr. Glendening has called on Mrs. Sauerbrey to abandon her challenge.
The Sauerbrey team has released the names of several people they said had unknowingly had several votes cast on their behalf.
One person, two votes
One of them, Beth Seiden, 29, a North Baltimore nurse, said she was skeptical. "She's wasting a lot of time and money," said Ms. Seiden, who got a surprise phone call recently from Sauerbrey supporters who informed her that someone had voted under her maiden name, Beth Cohen.
Voter lists show that two votes were cast -- one under Ms. Seiden's married name and one under her maiden name. Ms. Seiden said that she had told the city Board of Elections to purge the maiden name after she got married five years ago but that they never did.
"Who knows how somebody voted in my name? The Board of Elections should have purged my name years ago," Ms. Seiden said. "But to me, it's not all that big of a deal. She needs more than 5,000 cases of this. She's shooting for something that's just not going to happen." Ms. Seiden is a Democrat who said she voted for Mr. Glendening.
Sauerbrey investigators received computer disks yesterday from state public safety agencies that will show them whether any voter was in prison at the time of the election and whether any voters were on parole or probation, Mr. Carbone said last night.
The disks were obtained through a public information request to the agencies that was made last month by the owner of a private investigation company working for Mrs. Sauerbrey, he said.
The Division of Parole and Probation made one disk available with the names and birth dates of 95,557 people under the agency's supervision as of Dec. 2. The Division of Correction released a disk containing the names of 20,835 inmates in prison on Nov. 8, the date of the general election.
State law prohibits some offenders from voting.
Mr. Ehrlich said he has not formally requested a congressional investigation.
It is unclear whether Congress will make time to look into a state election, but incoming Republican leaders have already shown they are interested in the outcome.
House Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich of Georgia has given at least $10,000 through his political action committee to Mrs. Sauerbrey's election challenge fund.
And incoming Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas is expected to be the guest of honor at a Sauerbrey fund-raiser here next month.
Although the governor's race remains their highest priority, Mrs. Sauerbrey and Mr. Ehrlich said they would push for stricter procedures for identifying voters at the polls in future elections.
They recommended, for example, that voters be required to produce positive identification at the polls. In addition, they said, election judges should be given the means to compare a voter's signature with the signature on the voter's registration card.