Election Fraud Allegations Mount In Newsom's Mayoral Victory

You’re reporting along with others I hope wake up our lethargic society to how their rights are being stolen right from under their noses. This is a major wake up call to get active, and demand cleanup of our voter roles, along with prosecution of those perpetuating voter fraud. March elections are almost here we have initiatives and are holding a primary to pick a presidential candidate; we need to know that those elections are clean. If based on the past election Prop J will be targeted for voter fraud, let’s stop it before it begins

If Federal funds are being used to control our poor people and forcing them to violate the law then the FEDS should do their job. And protect these innocent people from being used, again and again. Demand the Justice Department do their job, we pay their salaries too.

We are paying attention, we don't hear anything is that the sounds of silence? Remember we vote.

Check out Nuru ties to San Francisco Redevelopment, also Goggin and Goggin. That path should lead to some revealing exposures of Nuru's operation Voter Fraud is just a single step on that path.

IN JANUARY ALONE , three senior city employees with ties to former mayor Willie Brown have been charged with what in most cities would be called political corruption. A city attorney's report claims that a former secretary to Brown's deputy chief of staff, Steve Kawa, fixed parking tickets for herself and friends. A senior cop admitted that he voted in San Francisco although he didn't live in town. And a Department of Public Works official with close ties to Brown allegedly pressured members of a city street-cleaning crew to vote for Mayor Gavin Newsom and campaign for him on city time.

Together the allegations present a picture of rampant corruption at city hall and suggest that the Brown administration allowed, or perhaps encouraged, all sorts of illegal activity to take place. The three cases present the first major challenge to Mayor Newsom and the new district attorney, Kamala Harris: if they don't move quickly and firmly to investigate and resolve the charges, they'll be sending a clear signal that the ocean of sleaze that flowed through Brown's city hall is still at high tide.

And so far, the signs aren't too good.

Newsom's public comments on the case of Mohammed Nuru, the deputy director of public works who allegedly told the street cleaners they would lose their jobs if they didn't vote for Newsom, have been limited and cautious. He told the San Francisco Chronicle the case should be fully investigated – but he never expressed any outrage or concern that this might be more than an isolated incident.

And Newsom has said nothing of any substance about the cases of Mary Ellen O'Brien, who allegedly dismissed parking tickets for herself and friends, or Rick Bruce, the deputy police chief who apparently registered and voted in San Francisco while living in San Bruno.

Equally alarming, there has been no word whatsoever from the San Francisco District Attorney's Office on any of the cases, all of which involve potential crimes. Harris told the Bay Guardian during the campaign that she would aggressively pursue political corruption cases and that her close connections to Brown wouldn't hamper her ability to prosecute public officials who abused the public trust. But so far, the only local official who has opened investigations of O'Brien and Nuru is City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose oversight is limited to civil and disciplinary matters. There's no evidence that anyone outside the San Francisco Police Department is investigating Bruce.

That doesn't give us much confidence in Harris's credibility. She needs to immediately and publicly open investigations into these three cases, and if there's any indication of criminal activity, she should bring charges.

Newsom should use these cases to announce that there will be zero tolerance for corruption in his administration – and begin by putting all three officials on administrative leave until the charges are resolved.

P.S. Newsom has been pushing for better oversight at the Department of Building Inspection, targeting the likes of Residential Builders Association head Joe O'Donoghue and permit expediter Walter Wong, both of whom happened to support Matt Gonzalez for mayor. We've been highly critical of DBI, and of Wong and O'Donoghue, for many years, and we're happy to see building-inspection and permit reforms. But that can't be the beginning and the end of Newsom's reform initiatives: with festering scandals at the San Francisco International Airport (the Kevin Williams firing, the Tutor-Saliba contracts, and more), at the Redevelopment Agency (with Lennar Corp.), at the Human Rights Commission (a long list), at Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and so many other city agencies and contractors, Newsom can't get away with claiming a reform agenda on the basis of cleaning up DBI.

MAYOR WILLIE BROWN -backed District Three incumbent Alicia Becerril has a lot of mysterious campaign contributors. According to the Ethics Commission's online files, 43 of the 54 individuals who contributed to Alicia Becerril's campaign for supervisor have "unknown" occupations and are "self-employed."

"That's the information [the contributors] reported to us. In general, we take the information off of the [donation] envelope," said Cory Black, Becerril's campaign manager.

Becerril's contribution filings do not technically violate the law. The Ethics Commission would only investigate such a case if a member of the public objected or if fields were left blank on the campaign files. Under investigation, campaign employees have to prove that they made an effort to obtain contributors' employment information.

Aaron Peskin, one of Becerril's opponents for supervisor in District Three, is fully aware of the missing information in Becerril's contribution files. "The campaign finance laws require disclosure to allow voters and the media to know whether or not a lot of money is coming from one source," Peskin said.

Peskin told us that he does not intend to file a complaint with the Ethics Commission.

Susan Horsfall is one of the 43 contributors whose employment information is left out of Becerril's files. Horsfall – a lawyer at Goggin & Goggin, which represents Lennar, the prime developer at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard – told us she does not remember whether she provided that information when she made her donation.

Black would not discuss Horsfall's donation, because he was away from his desk and did not want to talk about specific contributions.

"We do need to do a better job on getting that information," Black admitted.

Genevieve Kramer

I predict the FBI investigation will derail the incumbent reelection, it can haunt him for years.

I received about 45,000 votes back in the late 1980s in a Board of Education election . When Ben Tom lost his supervisorial races, his margin of loss was close to the number of votes that I received.

The post-Brown era already begins, the scramble to the fragmented power are already underway. District elections will produce new faces and give many new comers a chance.

The central theme of my campaign is to seek and encourage the incumbent’s closest friends to turn against him, into prosecution witnesses and to encourage all citizens to come forward with evidences. Only huge amount of reward money will turn people with the incriminating evidences into a responsible citizen, saving San Francisco taxpayers money. I encourage Clint Reilly and Frank Jordan to contribute $2 million into this reward fund, and all the rest of the candidates, plus all the good conscientious voters.

The incumbent claimed to be a good friend of a convicted felon, Charlie Walker, who owns two companies and is a controversial trucking contractor.

Walker served three years in state prison on a conviction around in the 1980’s, for abusing city
minority-contracting programs in a scheme court records show.

Walker's firm has obtained an $825,000 trucking subcontract on the airport reconstruction, and a $10
million trucking subcontract on the BART airport extension. Both subcontracts were allocated under
programs to benefit minority-owned businesses, public records show.

Continue to encourage witnesses and best friends to come forward, to give criminal testimonies against the incumbent. Charlie Walker, Blanche Brown…are some of the closest people that can bring damaging evidences against the incumbent, and I see huge reward as the incentive. I predict he will not finished out his term if he get lucky and be reelected. Criminal indictment still looms past Election Day. His health is a major issue. I challenge the incumbent to release his medical report by two independent doctors, which he is fit to finish out a second term and free of terminal diseases.

Keep the public pressure on the FBI investigation. Someone should implement sting operations somehow.

I will keep the option open on my campaign spending; it could be a decent amount of money, which can send home a strong message to all voters right on the eve before the Election Day, keeping the elements of surprise. The court is another option to ensure my fair share of the media coverage and an honest election without dead and repeated voters, which are bused in.

The FBI investigation is a dark horse; my unpredictable spending could be a factor. The Internet campaign is a factor.

What about the talk of keeping his lifestyle with the meager salary that the mayor is making? How is he coping with the low income he is making as mayor?

Debate is what he wanted when he is the challenger, now he doesn’t want to have any debates.

Y2K readiness and preparation is important for a city this size, there is no cry for emergency backup.

Old age is a factor to be a responsible public official, and to finish out a term. I am calling the incumbent to release his medical report.

The Muni union power must be brought under control; salaries are the highest or at least the second in the nation. Overtimes are being abused. I will fix Muni in 90 days, which was a lie by the incumbent, the city charter guarantees the Muni workers 2nd highest paid transit workers in the nation, which can run about $80,000 per year. The incumbent gave the union another raise in an election year.

Streets can be kept cleaner by outlawing spitting and impose warnings and heftier fines.

All foreign bank accounts, medical examination reports, tax returns are to be released to the voters.

Julie Lee, Benny Yee, Pius Lee, Rose Pak, Ben Hom are just some of the Chinese leaders supporting the incumbent, which none of these leaders are elected in their respected community.

The incumbent claimed the mayor's lowly salary is inadequate for his lifestyle; but how did he manages. Did he keep any Foreign bank accounts?

All department employees and appointed positions that are $100,000 and over in salary are to be reviewed.
I will abolish reverse discrimination, equal rights for whites.

49ers football stadium is a major flop, a waste of taxpayers money. I will prevent election fraud, like the Eddie Debartolo's 49ers football stadium ballot, although it passed with the smallest of vote margin, it is still being investigated. No doubt, some frauds were involved and admitted by the Department of Election, under Germaine Wong.

Asian trips that aren't fruitful for the city, but to bring business leaders to win contracts for themselves.
I will not abuse my Mayoral power using Police escort as a mayor. PBS (Public Broadcasting Station) planned to have a series on Chinatown activist Rose Pak, but have to cancel because all frightful insiders afraid to talk, she is the secret Chinese power behind the mayor. Rose Pak caused the Chinese Hospital fundraising to be audited.
The tow away of cars in tow away hours is more like a racket which produce incomes for sweetheart contractors but not reduction of traffic jams.

Reduce crimes and violence against riders on Muni and in low-income housing.
Stop sweetheart contracts, like the French advertising company with all those toilets and newsstands on the streets.

``Star Wars'' director George Lucas group needed to be monitored closely, he won the right to develop a chunk of San Francisco's Presidio, one of the crown jewels of American urban parkland.



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San Francisco is NOT Florida!

People of color decry voting rights violations in mayoral election

by Tiny

PoorNewsNetwork


Bianca Henry of Family Rights and Dignity and the People of Color Caucus spoke out Thursday about voting rights violations in the mayoral election.
Hunters Point activist Alvin Jones spoke out boldly against voter intimidation at the press conference Thursday on the City Hall steps.
Photos: Joseph Bolden, PNN

“We have been Florida for a long time.” Voting rights activists, media and concerned citizens formed a tight circle on the steps of City Hall Thursday as Willie Ratcliff, publisher of the Bay View, spoke at a press conference exposing the frightening allegations of voter abuse that occurred in the recent San Francisco mayoral race. “I am really glad to see this come up. We have been trying to get this story out for a long time. This is nothing new.”

As Willie spoke, PNN reporters Joseph Bolden, Clive Whistle and I shook our heads in frustrated agreement. Clive mumbled, “Maybe the truth about the A. Phillip Randolph Institute (known as APRI, or Willie Brown’s voting machine) will finally come out.”

Several members of the newly formed People of Color Caucus approached the microphone, demanding redress and accountability from the City Attorney, the San Francisco Ethics, Elections and Human Rights Commissions and the Secretary of State if need be for 150 incidents of voter abuse documented by the Matt Gonzalez for Mayor campaign voter fraud unit.

Recent stories on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle by reporter Anastasia Hendrix featuring allegations of nine street cleaners that they were pressured to vote for Gavin Newsom and walk precincts for the Newsom campaign have given the issue much-needed momentum.

As the activists spoke, I remembered back to the year 2000 and the odd experience of having to tell homeless people who were expecting their “payoff” from APRI - for voting - that there was nothing we could do. We shared an office building with APRI at the time.

Later that year, I heard from Clive Whistle that when he was a homeless shelter resident, he was approached several times to “vote for the right person.” Then, in the last election, as reported in Clive’s op-ed (see “White boy wins!” in the Dec. 24, 2003, Bay View), he was aggressively “courted” by Newsom supporters coming to his Sunnydale apartment.

“When I went to vote, I had a poster of Matt Gonzalez on my truck, and I heard a man scream at me, ‘Alvin Jones, you can’t vote here!’” Alvin Jones, a member of the Bayview Hunters Point Project Area Committee (PAC) and a long time community activist, spoke hesitantly but bravely into the mike. “I didn’t know what to think, so I went down to the Matt Gonzalez headquarters (on Third Street), and there I saw all these young folks outside (waving Newsom signs), threatening people, intimidating people, saying things like, ‘You gonna lose your homes if you vote for Gonzalez.’”

“The worst thing I witnessed was in our district (District 10), especially on election day,” Majeid Crawford told the group. (Majeid was profiled in “We cannot turn back” by PNN Youth in Media writer Martrice Candler in the Oct. 21, 2003, Bay View.) “The Newsom people were blocking the entrance in front of our office - slamming our doors open and shut, intimidating people, bumping into people - telling us they were gonna come down shooting.

“If people had Matt Gonzalez stickers and posters on their cars, they would snatch the posters and rip them off the cars. So on election day when we needed to walk the precincts, our staff was inside the office, intimidated. It got so bad that we had to bring folks down just to protect us.”

Majeid went on to relate the story surrounding an event called “Pop Yo Collaz for Matt Gonzalez” in which a “Newsom supporter showed up threatening the organizers with violence if they promoted Matt Gonzalez on the mike.”

“I am a true believer in civil rights. My family fought for the right to vote,” testified Bianca Henry from Family Rights and Dignity, a project of the Coalition on Homelessness, expressing the basic tenets that the grassroots caucus claimed as their founding principles: To preserve and protect the voting and civil rights of communities of color.

The People of Color Caucus was formed during the run-off phase of the Matt Gonzalez for Mayor campaign to coordinate outreach activities in

Bay View Hunters Point, Fillmore, Tenderloin, Visitacion Valley, Excelsior and other ethnic neighborhoods. The caucus continues as a nonpartisan coalition of progressive-minded community activists committed to educating and empowering residents in communities of color to engage in the electoral process.

In light of the controversy surrounding the claims reported in the Chronicle by former SLUG employees that they were coerced into campaigning and voting for Newsom, the People of Color Caucus issued a press release demanding an investigation of the 150 cases of voter fraud, intimidation and other election day abuses that the Gonzalez campaign voter fraud unit documented. The group is also demanding that the City of San Francisco initiate pro-active steps by establishing a permanent voter fraud unit within the Department of Elections and by funding and publicizing a city-wide multi-lingual voter fraud reporting hotline.

“What I still can’t understand is the plantation mentality that informs an election like this one,” mused Clive, “galvanizing all these poor folk of color to vote for this rich white boy (Newsom), backed by all these other rich white power brokers, only to promote more and more gentrification and decimation of poor communities and communities of color like the Bay View.”

“Something stinks in City Hall,” said Riva Enteen, a civil rights attorney and member of the Matt Gonzalez for Mayor campaign’s voter fraud unit. “There were over 400 reports of voter fraud reported to Gonzalez volunteers who were monitoring polling places, such as power outages, harassment by Newsom volunteers and Newsom campaign staff walking door to door with provisional ballots.”

Riva repeated the news reported in local media that the executive director of the city’s Ethics Commission demanded that staffers destroy documents suggesting the intent of Newsom’s inauguration committee to use its funds to pay off campaign debts, which is against state law. Luckily, the commission staff refused to destroy the documents.

The conference ended with inspiring words by caucus member Anamaria Loya, executive director of La Raza Centro Legal: “San Francisco is not Florida. We are here to demand that the most basic civil right of people to vote be protected and that steps be implemented so the next election in San Francisco is fair and free and safe.”

For more art and journalism on issues of poverty and racism by people who experience it first hand, go on-line to http://www.poormagazine.org.

Who will stop the theft of the Shipyard?

by Kevyn Lutton

Low income and very low income people of color who live in zip code 94124 – Bay View Hunters Point - must not be ignored, pushed aside and trampled upon just to enable a big outside corporation, Lennar, to make a fortune from owning and developing the Hunters Point Shipyard. Lennar has no right to own it. Nor does the City itself have a right to dispose of it for profit. To do so is illegal, and any entity that supports this current plan is either corrupt or ignorant of the law.

There are many laws and regulations - federal, state and local - that are being violated in the actions of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. Some of those laws and regulations are the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC), the Base Closure, Community Redevelopment and Homeless Assistance Act of 1994 (Redevelopment Act, Public Law 103-421, 32 CFR, Part 176) and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

On Thursday, the Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) for the Hunters Point Shipyard voted on a resolution refusing to sign off on the transfer of the Naval Shipyard to the Redevelopment Agency until it can certify that the many serious law violations are investigated and remedied. The resolution passed unanimously with no nays and no abstentions. The RAB is determined to stop the theft of the Shipyard.

The spark for this historic rebellion was struck on Dec. 2, 2003. That night, a very large assembly of community people and allies showed up at City Hall to speak out on the community’s behalf before a meeting of the Redevelopment Commission (see “Community barred from Redevelopment Commission meeting” in the Dec. 10 Bay View). That meeting was a raucous one.

The agenda for the night was the approval of the Disposition Development Agreement (DDA) between Redevelopment and Lennar for the redevelopment of the Shipyard. Community people who oppose the DDA found themselves locked out of the hearing. A Sheriff’s Department deputy was guarding the door. We were told the room was full and all the seats were taken. Eventually we were allowed, one person at a time, to go in to speak.

One of us, upon entering the room, saw at least seven empty seats. She shouted through the door that there were empty seats. She was promptly put in a wrist-hold and arrested. We all were able to speak that night, which made the meeting very long, but did not prevent one commissioner from sleeping soundly through the whole thing.

In the end, however, the Redevelopment Commission voted unanimously to approve the DDA.

Laws and policies require that the Shipyard be developed in the “best interests” of, and to “maximize” the economic benefits to, the community affected by the Shipyard’s closure, which Redevelopment has determined is the Bay View Hunters Point community, which is comprised of the approximately 37,000 residents and small business owners of the area encompassed by the postal zip code 94124.

The RAB contends that the approval of the DDA by the Redevelopment Commission actually disenfranchises the residents. The low- and very low-income residents, primarily people of color beneficiaries, are provided no ownership or control of, and no direct share in the profits from, Shipyard development.

Redevelopment’s idea of “best” and “maximize” is a few so-called affordable houses and a small piece of Parcel B - which is flooded during high tide - that Lennar can’t profit from anyway. Their idea of “best” and “maximize” is throwing a few crumbs at this community and hogging the rest to make real their dream of full-out gentrification.

“Plans to redevelop the land where the affected community resides have taken place without public participation of those affected (and) will induce gentrification and displacement of the residents and neighborhood business and services. It is destroying the equilibrium of those who are moving and residents left behind. As long-term residents leave, the schools, churches and social networks that make up the social fabric of the Hunters Point community are being compromised,” said Lynne Brown, Hunters Point resident and co-chair of the RAB.

As Maurice Campbell, convener of the Community First Coalition, said, “The Redevelopment plans also fail to identify and address the disproportionately high adverse human health, socioeconomic and environmental impacts of the seriously contaminated Shipyard on the Hunters Point community.”

We the people must take possession of this land. We must develop it into a thing of beauty. But we must make and keep the profits, not Lennar or any other outside entity.

We can do this by forcing the city to deed the Shipyard directly to a corporation owned and controlled completely and exclusively by BVHP beneficiaries. That is the only way our best interests can be maximized. Our corporate charter will require this, and corrupt city officials will have no say. We will own stock in our corporation and receive dividends from the Shipyard’s development. We will no longer be identified as a ghetto of poverty created by city planning with its design of concentrating poor people of color in an undeveloped corner made filthy by big polluters, including the Navy, cut off from urban access enjoyed by other city dwellers, and allowed to stew in despair.

We can create a village where all classes will want to live. And when rich folks buy our beautiful condominiums, we will profit from it and also live here in dignity. Through leveraging the value of the land, we can easily borrow money to plan, finance, develop and manage our land by hiring professional consultants who will work for a fair fee - but have no ownership in the Shipyard.

The Hunters Point Shipyard, at the conclusion of its cleanup, will be extremely valuable property. At this time, the city and the Redevelopment Agency are preparing for the removal of the present and affected community just as the government removed the Native peoples from their lands.

Now is the time we must take a stand. Politicians have consistently lied to this neighborhood. They have no credibility with us. We are firm in our resolve NOT to be removed. And we have a plan of action.

Our first step is to put Redevelopment on notice that the RAB demands that the City and County of San Francisco must CEASE and DESIST from all activities relative to the transfer of the Shipyard until all the violations of law involved - and there are many - are investigated and corrected.

The full resolution can be viewed at http://mecresources.com/RABonViolations1.htm.

MAYOR WILLIE BROWN is trying to distance himself publicly from his former aide Bevan Dufty, who is in a runoff race for the District Eight supervisorial seat against progressive Eileen Hansen. But it's clear from Dufty's campaign contributions and the makeup of his volunteers that the runoff is essentially a repeat of the 2000 San Francisco Board of Supervisors races, which pitted the machine's interests against those of neighborhood activists and progressives.

Among the signs of machine interest in the race:

• Numerous current and former city employees who are working or have worked for the mayor are helping out on Dufty's campaign.

• More than half of the $53,000 Dufty has raised comes from individuals connected to real estate and landlord interests as well as to the Brown administration and registered political lobbyists, according to research by Service Employees International Union Local 250. Research by the Bay Guardian confirmed that at least $1,200 came from lobbyists – which directly contradicts the assertion on Dufty's Web site that he doesn't accept money from lobbyists.

• Brown owes Dufty, who worked hard on the mayor's 1999 reelection campaign. Dufty helped organize a meeting of queer leaders in the arts community at which, some attendees told us, they were pressured to write checks to the mayor's campaign (see "Muscling In," 12/8/99). And he was known for tracking down staffers who weren't pitching in enough time and/or money to Brown's reelection bid. In 2000 he also volunteered on the campaign of former school board member Juanita Owens, the mayor's pick for District Five supervisor who took a beating from Green Party member and current supervisor Matt Gonzalez (see "Around City Hall," 4/14/99).

Friends in high places
P.J. Johnston, the mayor's press secretary, insists Brown isn't going all-out to defeat Eileen Hansen. And Dufty doesn't make a big deal of the mayor's support in his literature or campaign pitches.

That's for good reason: In 2000 almost every candidate for district supervisor who was tied to Brown and his pro-development policies was soundly defeated. In District Eight, incumbent Mark Leno, a Brown appointee, went out of his way to distance himself from the mayor – and only narrowly survived a challenge from Eileen Hansen, who is now Dufty's opponent.

The last thing the Dufty campaign wants is to have this race defined as the machine against the neighborhoods.

But in fact, that's exactly what it is.

Among those who are volunteering for Dufty: Johnston, Karin Carlson, who serves as Brown's liaison to the Board of Supervisors, and Rebecca Prozan, a former Brown staffer. Other workers in the Mayor's Office have been spotted walking precincts and handing out literature.

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission general manager, Pat Martel, who was appointed by Brown, has given money to Dufty. As have Eleanor Johns, the mayor's chief of staff; Steve Kawa, the mayor's deputy chief of staff; and Kandace Bender, a former mayoral spokesperson who now works for the San Francisco airport. Indeed, donations from employees of the city and county of San Francisco amount to at least $10,800.

Dufty has also received money from some of the mayor's biggest political supporters and a few lobbyists. Steve Besser, a Brown ally who as recently as 1999 was one of the most prominent lobbyists at city hall, gave $100, as did his wife, Jacqueline, who has had a contract with the airport. Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church gave $100. Brown's old friend Terry Goggin also gave $100, and former SFPUC commissioner Victor Makras and his wife donated $200. Lobbyist Barbara French gave $100. Brown himself contributed $100.

Two former machine-friendly supervisors have contributed: Leslie Katz and Barbara Kaufman. So did Kaufman's developer husband, Ron. And who could be closer to the machine than Kimiko Burton, the current public defender who lost her bid against Jeff Adachi in a race that was defined as a machine candidate against an independent. Burton and her husband, Emilio Cruz (formerly Brown's Muni director), each gave $100.

Hoping for backlash
Backers of Hansen say they hope Dufty's connection to Brown will turn off voters. And just in case anyone might not have gotten the message, some 400 signs have appeared throughout the Castro District announcing, "Willie Brown endorses Bevan Dufty for Supervisor." Dufty didn't put those signs up; Hansen's supporters did.

"They funny thing is, some people think Bevan put them up himself," tenant activist Robert Haaland said. The signs don't say that the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Democratic Club paid for the printing. Club president Debra Walker told us she was planning to include a disclosure until she found out she wasn't required to by law.

"We followed the rules," she said.

Both sides are planning to spend significant amounts of "soft money," independent expenditures that aren't covered by campaign spending limits. Walker says the Milk club plans to spend about $9,000 in soft money on behalf of Hansen. And if all goes well, some $30,000 to $40,000 more will come from union coffers, consultant Jim Stearns told us.

Meanwhile, Mark Mosher of Barnes Mosher Whitehurst Lauter and Partners, a campaign consulting and lobbying firm with strong ties to the machine, is handling the independent expenditure campaign for Dufty. It's not yet clear how much money is involved, but it's likely to be, at the very least, competitive with soft-money efforts behind Hansen.

Dufty did not return numerous call by deadline.

Big difference
On the issues, there's a significant difference between Hansen and Dufty.

Both the San Francisco Examiner and the Bay Area Reporter have devoted columns to Hansen's opposition to Proposition N (Care Not Cash ) – saying only Dufty can be trusted to help implement the measure. Examiner columnist Frank Gallagher called Hansen out of touch with her district because voters there supported Prop. N. He failed to point out that Proposition R, the measure that would have ended rent control on as many as 85,000 units in the city and was supported by Dufty, failed by the same percentage by which Prop. N won.

Indeed, tenant activists who fought Prop. R are now working the phones and walking the streets for Hansen.

"Between the volunteers she already had and those from the [anti-] Prop. R campaign who've been able to come on, she'll be really, really strong on the grassroots part," said Ted Gullicksen, head of the San Francisco Tenants Union.

Media outlets supporting Dufty, including the Fang-owned Independent and Examiner and the Bay Area Reporter, say Dufty's experience means he will provide good service for the district. But his insider status also detracts from Dufty's claim that he will be an independent voice on the Board of Supervisors.

"Dufty's been part of the woodwork, and we need someone who can challenge the powers that be – especially with a big challenge over the city's budget coming up," said Tom Radulovich, the former BART director who came in third in the District Eight supervisor race. Radulovich has thrown his support to Hansen. Some of his key backers, including Sups. Aaron Peskin and Sophie Maxwell, have decided to support Hansen as well.

"I'm a progressive and an environmentalist, into group planning and good government," Radulovich said. "I think on all of these issues, Eileen's values are close to my values – much more so than Dufty."

This is only the tip of the iceberg, what is going to be breaking stories as more people come forward with information on Election Fraud from this last election and past elections, is going to be a major story for some time to come with the dots connecting.
We San Franciscan’s have allowed our vote to be taken for granted, allowing some very savvy criminal types to manipulate our elections. Keep you eyes and ears open report any voter fraud you experienced, by working together we can have clean elections, and have the voter fraud perpetrators relax at a place they richly deserve to be at.

Did any one check on how much special interest money was given to Community Based Operations and their Directors to manipulate our vote? Add to that the army of Special Assistants that were appointed by the former Mayor (over 600). Asking the top salary earners in San Francisco City and County Government to take a 25 % pay cut is only a drop in the bucket, to what is spent under the table by special interest to manipulate our votes. With SLUG we are only seeing a very small insight to what is really going on Special Interest knew that you needed an army of people and 501c3 Non profits provided that vehicle.
In many cases 501c3 work with poor low income people that desperately need jobs and the fat cats know that people working for these non profits are desperate to keep what ever little income that they are receiving to remain alive.
If you really want to clean up the system investigate the special interest fat cats that have caused our votes to miss represent the intent of us We the People. If you identify what they were after (Development, Land etc.) and you back track you will be able to find their operatives, and possibly the source remember they always need something more valuable than what they are spending.

If these Non Profits receive any Federal Funds or their workers who may be recipients of Federal Funds through Welfare to Work does that not require the Justice Department to investigate these charges? As explained by the Director of the U.S. Elections Crime Branch (Department of Justice): "When elections are corrupted, arbitrary and corrupt government inevitably follows. “Rooting out corruption in the electoral process, and bringing those responsible for it to swift and sure justice, is an important national law enforcement priority” I understand the City’s involvement through what I read
There is an edict from City Hall that command staff members must live in San Francisco. Bruce is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying the order may have led to his decision to vote in the city. "If these accusations are accurate, people should be held accountable," said Newsom. "I don't think anybody wants anyone working on their behalf doing anything inappropriate. So I want an investigation to go forward." Mayor Newsom says if the charges are true, and he benefited from the fraud, he is disturbed by the idea that people might have been forced to vote for him.
"If these accusations are accurate, people should be held accountable," said Newsom. "I don't think anybody wants anyone working on their behalf doing anything inappropriate. So I want an investigation to go forward."
Falvey said Director of Public Works Ed Lee also will send letters early this week to about 300 companies and nonprofit organizations that hold contracts with the city asking them to report "any inappropriate behavior,'' she said.
The letter will include a reminder that lobbying for any candidate or issue is prohibited by law for organizations that receive city funds, she said.
"We are taking this very seriously," Falvey said of the investigations by the Voter Protection and Fraud Unit of the secretary of state and the city attorney's office.
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris opened an investigation Friday into allegations that city-paid workers were pressured to campaign and vote for Gavin Newsom for mayor and other complaints of election improprieties.
“Seniors and other folks in public housing are particularly vulnerable to intimidation and bribes,” Harrison said, “due to poverty and the ‘one-strike’ policy of federal housing programs. All it takes is an accusation of drug use or criminal behavior to get kicked out of public housing, and this threat can be effective in influencing voting or discouraging it altogether.” This kind of harassment on the part of campaign workers is enhanced by the general police presence that was on the streets of Bayview Hunters Point on Election Day.
Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who lost a mayor's runoff race four years ago, says some city workers had to campaign against him.
"I used to see city workers campaigning against me. Whether it was on their time or not, I don't know," he said. When asked if they were pressured, Ammiano said, "Well, some of them told me they were."
The Secretary of State is committed to a goal of 100% voter participation by eligible citizens and a tough zero tolerance policy for voter fraud. Secretary of State Kevin Shelley announced Friday his office would investigate allegations that city employees were forced to work for Mayor Gavin Newsom's election campaign.



``These accusations are serious in nature,'' Shelley said. He said his Voter Protection and Fraud Investigation Unit would look into the charges.

The poor and our seniors are being unwittingly used to subrogate our vote by the powerful. Are you going to address this?

Supporters of Supervisor Matt Gonzalez's mayoral campaign on Thursday made public detailed allegations of voter intimidation and possible fraud, calling on the City Attorney and the Secretary of State to expand investigations on previous charges that city workers pressured pro-Gavin Newsom votes during December's runoff election.

Members of the People of Color Coalition spoke on the steps of City Hall with a backdrop of city maps overlaid with more than 160 stickers representing areas where alleged voting irregularities occurred.

Allegations included electioneering, questionable power outages at polling places in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood -- a wellspring of support for Gonzalez -- dead people showing up on voter rolls, problems with the Eagle voting machines and poll workers turning people away near closing time without letting them cast provisional ballots.

An anti-fraud unit associated with the Gonzalez campaign documented the reports of the alleged irregularities, which were weighted toward complaints against Newsom but also included several irregularities that could have hurt either candidate.

Much of the alleged Election Day impropriety occurred in the Bayview-Hunters Point community, where -- as witnessed by The Examiner -- young people waving Newsom signs surrounded Gonzalez's Third Street headquarters and confronted his supporters.

At Thursday's press conference, former Gonzalez staffers said they felt their office was under attack. Alvin Jones, who went to vote with his 81-year-old mother, said they were twice harassed away from a neighborhood polling area allegedly because he had a Matt Gonzalez sign on his car.

"You're more or less risking your life to vote," Jones said, adding that another car bearing Newsom campaign signs dropped off a voter without incident. "It's wrong, and it should be stopped."

The most serious allegations include charges that Newsom supporters went door to door handing out provisional ballots -- usually they are handed out only at polling stations -- and that votes were cast in the names of dead people.

In addition to calling for an investigation into the alleged incidents, the group asked for the establishment of a permanent anti-fraud unit within the Elections Department and a multilingual toll-free hotline to report voter fraud.

Elections Director John Arntz said his department always staffs a multilingual phone bank on election days and sends out deputies to check on fraud allegations, calling in the police if needed.

"As far as this last election, we had calls from people from both campaigns -- about both campaigns -- on electioneering," Arntz said.

In one of the most serious allegations, Green Party activist Marc Salomon said that a preliminary study of the current voter file showed up to 4,000 names and birthdates that appear to match people reported as dead in Social Security records. About 1,200 of those names appear to have cast ballots, Salomon said.

Newsom won the mayoral election by more than 14,000 votes, relying on a strong vote-by-mail campaign that overcame Gonzalez's higher numbers on Election Day.

Perhaps the United Nations should have monitored the San Francisco race that elected Gavin Newsom mayor in December. The state has launched probes into two cases of possible voter irregularities among city employees. The Secretary of State’s office, which oversees local and state elections, is looking into claims by nine street cleaners who said their bosses pressured them to campaign for Mr Newsom and cast votes for him. Mr Newsom, who took office on January 8th, supports the investigation and denies any role in asking city employees to vote for him. The FBI is watching to see if the allegations prompt a larger federal inquiry.

The state is also looking at whether a deputy police chief should be prosecuted for voting in San Francisco elections when he has a home outside the city. Rick Bruce, who was in line for the chief’s job, said he registered to vote in San Francisco using his mother’s address. He said that Willie Brown, the former mayor, had made it clear he wanted police commanders to live in the city.

For background, see: Almost Green, December 11th 2003

A Report of the 2002-2003 Civil Grand Jury

For the City and County of San Francisco

IMPROVING THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF DEMOCRACY

CIVIL GRAND JURY REPORT ON DEPARTMENT OF ELECTIONS AND THE CONDUCT OF THE NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 2002 ELECTIONS

Released May 28, 2003

I applaud your journalism and your choice on news stories. One of the easiest ways for a reader to dismiss a journalist, and therefore their stories, is to find grammatical and typographical errors. The focus of your piece was Gavin Newsom, but partially through the story you began misspelling his name by adding an 'e' where one doesn't belong.

Please proofread your articles before submission.

Again, I do want to say that you have solid journalism skills!

Don't be intimidated
If You or your family or friends have experienced Voter Intimidation, or seen Voter Fraud, Elections Violations report it to the following numbers.
Secretary Of State of California Voter Fraud Hotline, 916 657-2166,
The FBI San Francisco Office (415) 553-7400 (24hrs.)
San Francisco City Attorney (415) 554-4700
Don't be intimidated lets clean up our elections convict the intimidators and violators so we can have clean elections

Some of the very same people that have spoken out about how their voting rights were violated in the last election are being manipulated and intimidated to change their position.
With no law enforcement in sight, they feel abandoned for standing up for their rights and our rights these individuals are Heroes for standing up in the face of adversity. Where is the media covering this story? How much abuse should these young heroes experience to protect our rights? It is time for you the public to speak up and demand something be done to protect our young people who are fighting for our rights. If not don’t cry when there is another dirty election and you vote does not count. Stop Voter Harrasment!

He transformed a tiny San Francisco gardening co-op into a national model for urban job-training programs. Then he emerged as City Hall's point man in a high-profile war on grime and graffiti.

But almost from the day in 2000 when he became an executive in the city Department of Public Works, there were complaints about how Mohammed Nuru, the dynamic protégé of then-Mayor Willie Brown, conducted the public's business.

Nuru has emerged as a central figure in a City Hall scandal involving alleged voting improprieties in the December runoff election won by Mayor Gavin Newsom. But according to public records and interviews, Nuru has been the subject of repeated complaints about alleged mishandling of taxpayers' funds.

Some staffers complained that Nuru, paid $150,867 a year, bent civil service rules to replace city workers with trainees from the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, or SLUG, the nonprofit he formerly ran.

Critics said that while he was a city official he pushed to extend SLUG's $1 million-per-year city grant for street-cleaning, and he allowed the nonprofit to charge the city thousands for unusual expenses: $75,000 for a double-wide trailer, $25,000 for overalls and baseball caps, $1,400 in consulting fees to a member of the SLUG board.

Once, Nuru allegedly ordered a DPW crew -- at a cost to the public of $40,000 -- to clean up a debris-strewn vacant lot near his home in Bayview- Hunters Point. Recently he was involved in requesting $70,000 in city funds to landscape another vacant lot in his neighborhood, city records show.

Some veteran DPW bureaucrats filed formal complaints, saying that when they objected to carrying out Nuru's orders, they were demoted or transferred.

Their complaints were made to the city attorney, then-District Attorney Terence Hallinan, and Public Works Director Ed Lee, among others, records show. The city never formally responded to the allegations, and no agency gave any indication it was interested in investigating, the complainants said.

The city attorney does not talk about investigations it is pursuing, said Chief Deputy City Attorney Lori Giorgi, but it takes "allegations of public corruption very seriously."

In January, nine former SLUG workers told the city Human Rights Commission that Nuru pressured them to electioneer and vote for Newsom for mayor. Nuru says he did nothing wrong, but now he is the target of a secretary of state probe of alleged election fraud, and the workers who complained in the past say the city attorney has started contacting them.

Complainants say that from the day he arrived at DPW, Nuru made clear he had been installed by the mayor to shake up a bureaucracy that Brown regarded as unresponsive, hidebound and racist. Because Nuru was the mayor's protégé, they contend, nobody wanted to take him on.

"Everybody was scared of Willie Brown," said former DPW maintenance manager Mel Humphreys, who said he was demoted and forced to retire because he objected to what he described as Nuru's use of city workers for private projects. "Nobody wanted to do anything about it."

Barbara Meskunas, president of the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods and a critic of Brown , says Nuru's trajectory as a city official shows how business was done at Brown's City Hall.

"The guy thought it was still business as usual," she said of Nuru. Others, though, describe Nuru as a can-do administrator who makes the city a better place.

Nuru is "incredibly effective,'' said Isabel Wade of the Neighborhood Parks Council. "I know that he has lots of enemies at the city government level because he kicks butt and they don't like it."

Nuru and DPW Director Lee declined to be interviewed for this story.

Nuru was born in England

Nuru, 41, was born in Bristol, England, son of a British mother and a Nigerian father. As he once testified in an employment lawsuit, he was raised on a farm near Lagos, then came to the United States to study landscape architecture at Kansas State University. He graduated in 1987.

Over the next four years, Nuru said, he helped supervise big construction projects in Sacramento, Seattle, suburban Washington, D.C., and Saudi Arabia.

In 1991, he moved to San Francisco to work as No. 2 executive at SLUG, then a tiny nonprofit that maintained a network of community gardens. He had big dreams: At SLUG, he hoped he could use his love of gardening to somehow aid minority youth in Bayview-Hunters Point.

"I believe I have a green thumb," he testified. "And I also have a passion for training young people and getting people into the workforce ... getting them into jobs, welfare-to-work programs, young people who sold drugs . .. trying to teach them to become productive citizens."

Nuru took charge in 1994, and SLUG was transformed.

By the time he left in 2000, he told the grass-roots.org Web site, SLUG's budget had grown 16-fold, to more than $2 million per year. It had a full- time staff of 30. Its workers -- many of them at-risk youth -- tended 40 urban gardens and a 4-acre organic farm in Bernal Heights.

SLUG's young workers were moving "from learning to weed to learning to read," Nuru said in a newsletter. Eventually, every SLUG graduate would be expected to go to college, he said.

At the heart of SLUG's expansion was Nuru's skill at winning grants. From 1992 to 2000, public records show that SLUG obtained more than $7 million in grants from the city.

The biggest came in 1998, when the Department of Public Works agreed to pay SLUG slightly more than $1 million per year for an ambitious welfare-to- work program in which employees work four days a week cleaning streets and spend a fifth day receiving job training.

SLUG won Nuru many friends in the Bayview, and the organization was praised by environmental groups.

"Working on the farm is planting seeds of hope among the garden interns themselves," Landscape Architecture magazine said in a 1996 article. "In effect, (they are) using the connection with the earth and the plant kingdom as a means of turning lives away from crime and despair."

Other plaudits came from the U.S. Department of Energy, which listed SLUG as a success story on its "smart communities" Web site; and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which made Nuru the keynote speaker at its National Community Involvement Conference in 2000.

Nuru was an inspiring advocate for SLUG, said Tom Branca, who met him in the mid-1990s on the board of an East Bay clone of SLUG called EBUG. Nuru was "dictatorial but a nice guy ... able to pull whatever strings were necessary to get the job done," said Branca, chair of the department of Landscape Horticulture at Oakland's Merritt College.

Branca recalled a "really moving" speech that Nuru once gave at the American Community Gardening Association's convention in Toronto, in which he described how SLUG was turning around the lives of youngsters. "Mohammed's presentation almost brought people to tears," he said.

SLUG also drew Nuru into San Francisco politics. At a SLUG event in the Bayview, Nuru met then-Assemblyman Willie Brown. In 1995, a year before he obtained U.S. citizenship, Nuru volunteered in Brown's successful campaign to unseat then-Mayor Frank Jordan, he testified.

Two years later, Nuru told his staff, he helped deliver the Bayview on Brown's controversial measure to help build a new stadium for the 49ers. The measure eked out a narrow, 1,500-vote victory, but the stadium has not been built.

Nuru also volunteered for Brown's re-election campaign in 1999, he testified. In that election, The Chronicle reported, three former SLUG employees say Nuru told them their jobs depended on Brown's re-election and required them to walk precincts, attend rallies and work phones for Brown's campaign while they were supposed to be cleaning streets.

In 2000, Brown hired Nuru to the No. 2 job at Department of Public Works, the 1,500-employee agency responsible for maintaining streets, sewers, public buildings and trees. Nuru was nominally the top aide to director Ed Lee. But employees believed the real power was Nuru, who boasted of his ties to the mayor and sometimes met with Brown without Lee.

In a city that was increasingly blighted and dirty, Nuru emerged as the mayor's go-to guy on an ambitious cleanup campaign.

To address growing concern over litter, graffiti and filth, Nuru instituted a "district by district neighborhood beautification and cleanup schedule."

He mounted Operation Scrub Down, which sent street cleaning crews into "hot spots," where grime was bad or where complaints were intense. Homeless people complained that their belongings were being trashed by Nuru's cleanup crews, but the sweeps were popular with merchants and homeowners.

Nuru took a tough line at DPW, telling his staff that Brown had put him there to shake things up. As one former manager, John Cone, later testified in an employment lawsuit, Nuru quoted Brown as calling DPW's management "a bunch of racists that were discriminating and holding people back." Nuru vowed to "get rid of those white managers," Cone said.

Some DPW staffers complained that the new boss ignored city rules for the proper use of public resources.

In December 2000, Nuru ordered a DPW crew to use city tree-toppers to hang Christmas decorations for merchants along Third Street in the Bayview, former maintenance manager Humphreys told the Civil Service Commission.

Humphreys said he resisted, contending that DPW wasn't supposed to do work for private businesses or individuals. He said Nuru blew up and accused him of "not liking his people.'' The project was scrapped.

In an interview, Humphreys contended that in his early days at DPW, Nuru also ordered city workers to clean up a privately owned, debris-strewn vacant lot near Nuru's home north of Candlestick Park. Humphreys put the cost of the cleanup at $40,000, and said it violated policies on the use of public resources at DPW.

Last fall, DPW asked the mayor's Office of Community Development for $70, 000 to clean up a debris-strewn, city-owned lot four doors from Nuru's home. City records show Nuru as the original DPW contact on the request.

Shirley Moore of the Candlestick Point Bayview Heights Community Group said the project was worthwhile and long overdue. She said her group got no special treatment from Nuru. She called him a good public servant who was being victimized by the allegations of election improprieties.

"Nobody can hold a torch to what he's done for the city," she said.

Concerns about SLUG grant

Critics have expressed concerns that Nuru oversees a large city grant to SLUG, the nonprofit to which they say he still has ties.

"You don't normally hire the executive director of an agency that your department is responsible for funding and overseeing, and put them in charge of the agency and the funding," said Paul Boden of the Coalition on Homelessness, who clashed with Nuru over Operation Scrubdown.

In 2002, when SLUG's street-cleaning contract expired, Nuru helped it win a one-year, $1 million extension, records show. Last month, SLUG won a new four-year, $4.8 million DPW grant.

After joining DPW, Nuru kept close ties to other nonprofits that do business with the city. He is on the board of the Clean City Coalition and the Strybing Arboretum Society, both of which have obtained DPW grants. Closer still are his ties to the San Francisco Community Restoring Urban Environments, or SF-CRUE. Nuru incorporated this nonprofit, state records show, using his DPW office as its address.

After The Chronicle inquired about SF-CRUE, DPW Director Lee sent Nuru an e-mail Feb. 9 saying he had learned that DPW was using city funds to form and raise funds for a nonprofit. Lee ordered Nuru to stop it and said city workers must pay back any money received for work on the project.

Public records show that in 2001, Nuru became locked in a contentious internal dispute over city payments to SLUG.

To get paid on its $1 million-per-year street-cleaning contract, SLUG had to submit receipts to the city. But the city official who oversaw the grant, John Cone, began rejecting repayment requests.

As Cone later testified, SLUG wanted the city to pay consulting fees of $250 per hour to a retired DPW official who once oversaw the SLUG contract. Cone rejected the $5,863 invoice.

Cone said he balked at a $25,000 bill for SLUG uniforms, including bib overalls and baseball caps. Cory Calandra, Nuru's replacement at SLUG, wrote in a letter that uniforms were needed because SLUG crews "must live up to the reputation of San Francisco as a world class city."

Cone testified that the contract didn't permit the payment.

"I thought it was a misappropriation,'' he testified.

Cone said he also questioned $12,500 in SLUG gas card charges, saying: "You couldn't tell if they were filling up their own cars or somebody else's."

City records reflect other unusual billings by SLUG in 2001 and 2002, including $500 for toys from Toys 'R' Us, and $1,400 for one month of "weekly group meetings" with consultant Martha Henderson, who also was a member of SLUG's board of directors.

One wrangle focused on a $65,000 bill for a double-wide trailer. As Cone described the transaction, SLUG billed the city for the trailer, saying it would be used as a classroom to train SLUG workers "to get ready for the workforce" when their jobs at the nonprofit ended.

Instead, Cone said, the trailer was set up on DPW grounds, where city workers spent perhaps $10,000 to refurbish it. After that it was used as a training facility by the DPW.

Cone said Nuru had personally approved the expenditure. Cone protested it as a misappropriation of city funds: "What they did was they manipulated the (contract) money so it could be purchased and used for DPW."

In his testimony, Cone said he came under increasing pressure from Nuru to pay the contested SLUG bills.

Their conflict played out during a time of financial distress at SLUG. By the summer of 2002 SLUG couldn't always meet its payroll or pay its bills, and for a time it had been financially unable to tend community gardens, SLUG's director wrote to the city. Cone, in testimony, said he believed Nuru was pushing him to approve the SLUG expenditures because of the cash flow problem at the nonprofit.

Finally, Cone said, Nuru replaced him with another official who signed off on the disputed payments. Cone testified about Nuru last June in a deposition in connection with an employment lawsuit that DPW worker Anthony Baeza had filed against the city. The city attorney was an adversary, defending against the lawsuit and challenging the testimony. After Cone testified, an assistant city attorney objected that his testimony was irrelevant, but did not address his contentions.

Cone died of cancer Feb. 5. In an interview before his death, he said the city showed little interest in his allegations about Nuru until after reports of suspected voting irregularities. After that, they began calling.

Cone said then that he hoped the new mayor would address the matter.

"I have pancreatic cancer," he said. "I've had a good run, but I'm finished. I have no hatred for Mr. Nuru, but I do want to see DPW get back on track, and I'd like to see the taxpayers get what they're paying for."

Anna Greggains said she remembers filling out an absentee ballot in last year's mayoral election, and records from the San Francisco Department of Elections show that her husband, Arthur, did the same -- which would be unremarkable, except that Mr. Greggains died in May at the age of 83.

"I don't know who did it,'' said Greggains, 87, audibly shocked at the possibility. "I know I didn't do it.'' She said she does not recall even seeing a ballot arrive at their longtime home in his name.

Four other votes among the 253,872 cast in the mayoral runoff election in December between Supervisors Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzalez were placed in the name of people who have died, according to a Chronicle analysis of election and death records.

No one contends the votes would have made a difference in the election's outcome -- Newsom won by more than 14,000 votes -- but election watchdogs say the glitches prove that votes can be fraudulently cast and that more safeguards are needed.

The Chronicle reviewed election and death-record data after former Gonzalez campaign workers held a news conference on the steps of City Hall and alleged, among other things, that as many as 400 people had cast votes from beyond the grave.

The allegation was based on a computer program that cross-referenced San Francisco voters who participated in the mayoral election against the federal government's Social Security Death Index. The program matched the voter's first and last names and his or her birthday against a national death certificate database and returned hundreds of matches.

But when a team of Chronicle reporters compared the names against middle initials and other identifying indicators, the list was whittled to five cases of inexplicable votes.

A family member confirmed, for example, that Phyllis Jackson died in May and that there was no way she could have voted in the mayoral election. But Elections Department records show that an absentee ballot was filed in her name, though there is no way to identify whom she -- or any other voter, alive or dead -- cast the ballot for. The family member, who did not want to be identified, said that even though Jackson's death was reported to the Elections Department, absentee ballots continued to arrive at the home, where they were torn up and thrown away. Another ballot was sent for Tuesday's election.

Pavel Iskoz confirmed that his wife, Zinaida Iskoz, died in 1998, and he was upset to learn that a vote had been cast in her name.

He said he has told election workers repeatedly that his wife had died and to take her name off the rolls. But he was not surprised that such a thing could happen.

"If it happens in Russia, it must happen here,'' he said through a translator.

When informed of the votes, Elections Director John Arntz said he confirmed the voters were still active on the rolls and referred the matter to the district attorney's office for further investigation. Casting a vote in someone else's name is a felony, punishable by imprisonment for up to three years.

No matter how small the number, Arntz said, "if there are people that are deceased and folks voting for them, that's a bad situation.''

Debbie Mesloh, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Kamala Harris, confirmed the matter is under investigation and said officials are working "in partnership with the secretary of state's office'' to determine how the voting occurred.

Arntz said the department receives death records from the city and county regularly and makes monthly purges of those who have died.

San Francisco revamped its voter purging system after a contentious 1997 election when voters narrowly approved $100 million worth of bonds to build a new football stadium for the 49ers. Computer checks afterward showed that nearly 2,000 people who had died were still eligible to vote, because their names had not been removed from the rolls, and nine were shown to have actually cast votes.

Even with the increased vigilance, Sylvia Lehr somehow voted in person in the 2003 runoff election, records show, even though her son, Robert Lehr, said she died in 2001.

"I can assure you that she was not available to do that,'' he said, baffled at learning the news.

"I don't know anyone who would want to use her name incorrectly, so if it's intentional, it's very surprising,'' said Lehr, a social worker at San Francisco General Hospital and a regular voter himself.

Also problematic is the case of Rose Clare Mangini, who died in June 1996, according to federal Social Security death records, but also voted in person in the Dec. 9 election, according to San Francisco Department of Elections data. Mangini's full name and address matched both databases and was confirmed with other unique identifiers used by The Chronicle.

A woman who answered the phone at the home Mangini shared with her husband, Luigi, refused to comment or confirm whether Rose had died or voted.

"This is private information,'' she said. "Why are you digging into people's private lives ... and invading people's privacy?'' Then she slammed down the phone and did not answer when called again.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that when called on another day, a woman answering the phone said she was Rose, but hung up as soon she learned a Chronicle reporter was on the line. The woman did not respond to subsequent messages left on the answering machine at the same number.

Even though the number of unexplained votes among the dead is small, it poses a significant concern, said Renee Saucedo, a former Gonzalez campaign worker who is also a member of the People of Color Caucus, which was formed after the election to advocate for voters' rights.

"In my opinion, the city must correct these electoral abuses, no matter how minor they appear,'' she said when told of The Chronicle's findings. "Otherwise, our communities will hear the message that their vote is pointless, and they can't be sure that their vote will count.''

Saucedo said other group members have been interviewed by the city attorney's office about other concerns and claims of voter intimidation compiled by the organization.

Marc Salomon, a computer programmer and former Gonzalez campaign worker who initially found several hundred suspect votes in the mayor's race, said he had doubts about whether San Francisco is vigilant enough about clearing the names of the dead off its voter rolls.

"I just realized that in my own family, a lot of folks died elsewhere, and I figured San Francisco is a city where people move pretty frequently, so I thought we should check it out,'' he said. "It's nice to know there were so few.''

Chronicle staff writers Erin McCormick, Todd Wallack, Jenny Strasburg, John Wildermuth, Robert Collier, C. W. Nevius, James Sullivan and Chuck Squatriglia contributed to this report.