ASHINGTON - Opponents of Patrick Buchanan will attempt this weekend to invalidate more than 250,000 ballots requested by the Buchanan campaign for a plebiscite to determine the Reform Party's presidential nominee.
''Buchanan is essentially stuffing the ballot box,'' Russell Verney, a former chairman of the party founded by Ross Perot, said in a telephone interview yesterday. The names, Verney said, were submitted by the Buchanan campaign from a database of the candidate's Republican supporters rather than from the rolls of Reform Party members.
The party's 10-member executive committee will take up the issue tomorrow at a meeting in Dallas, following a ruling Wednesday night by a separate subcommittee that the Buchanan campaign had failed to verify that the ballots would be going to bona fide Reform Party members.
Jim Mangia, national secretary of the Reform Party, said he originally expected about 100,000 party members to vote for this year's nominee, a number that would be swamped if the Buchanan voters are approved. Mangia also opposes Buchanan.
The Buchanan campaign belittled the challenge, saying the latest allegations were based on inaccurate information. ''We are confident that Pat Buchanan is going to get the nomination. He has gone state by state, winning strong majorities,'' said K.B. Forbes, a Buchanan spokesman.
Still, the Reform Party is being roiled by charges and countercharges as it moves toward a national convention beginning Aug. 10 in Long Beach, Calif. In the years since Perot established the party and ran as its presidential nominee in 1992 and 1996 the organization has become the scene of nearly constant conflict. Verney, a Perot loyalist, said the Texas businessman had no role in the current infighting.
Besides the ballots, Buchanan forces and veteran Reform Party officials are squabbling over the credentials of delegates planning to attend the convention. Rival delegates from as many as 40 states may show up at the convention, Verney said.
Since Buchanan began his push to claim the Reform Party nomination less than a year ago, his followers have seized control of delegations in a number of states. His opponents say the Buchanan supporters have no interest in Reform Party precepts and are merely using it as a vehicle for Buchanan's candidacy. Also at stake is $12.5 million in federal campaign funds that will be turned over to the party.
''Rather than building the party, they are muscling people out,'' Verney said.
Verney and other longtime Reform Party leaders are rallying behind John Hagelin, a physicist who has run for president twice before as a Natural Law Party candidate. In a press conference here earlier this week, Hagelin said he ''will not let this process be stolen by what could be massive voter fraud.''
The feud over delegates may be resolved at a meeting of the 163-member national committee two days before the convention begins, when Buchanan forces are expected to try to install a friendly chairman of the credentials committee in order to ensure that Buchanan delegates will be seated.
Fireworks are expected to erupt. In February, a meeting of the national committee dissolved into a near riot and police threatened several times to intervene and bring the proceedings to a halt. Just before that meeting, Governor Jesse Ventura of Minnesota bolted the party and claimed it had become ''hopelessly dysfunctional.''
Ventura's activisits were ousted at the February meeting by an alliance of Buchanan supporters and the old Perot faction, but that coalition has now broken down.
''I know it sounds confusing,'' Verney said. ''We're not only here to govern, we're here to entertain.''
