In the face of mounting reports from college students who say they have had their party registrations and polling places switched by apparent political scam artists, Gov. Ed Rendell yesterday said his office will refer allegations of possible voter registration fraud to the state attorney general's office.

At the same time, Attorney General Jerry Pappert issued a letter warning the governor against previously announced plans to dispatch teams of Election Day observers to polling places throughout the commonwealth on Tuesday, ostensibly to guard against voting irregularities.

The political set-to, with a Democratic governor crying foul and a Republican attorney general warning that governor not to overstep his authority, came amid increasing complaints by University of Pittsburgh students that their party registrations and, in some cases, their polling places, were switched after they signed what they believed were petitions on topics ranging from medical marijuana to auto insurance rates.

Among those who found themselves on the Allegheny County voting rolls as registered Republicans were clearly ineligible would-be voters, including a 17-year-old Squirrel Hill student and a Chilean graduate student who is not a citizen of the United States. Among those scammed was the son of the former executive director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

A spokesman for Pappert said the attorney general's office had not yet received any voter registration referrals. Rendell announced his intention to seek an investigation during a campaign swing through Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon.

"This borders on fraud," Rendell said of the registration switches. "It's something that should be investigated."

To date, officials in Indiana, Montgomery and Allegheny counties have indicated that hundreds of college students were tricked by teams of petition canvassers who did not identify their employer, except for one who said he was being paid by the Republican Party. A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee has denied any connection to the petitions and suggested they were part of a Democratic plot to discredit the RNC.

Victims of the scam don't know who was behind it, but some now wonder where they should vote, if their votes will count and, in at least two cases, why they're registered to vote in the first place.

"They didn't even check to see if I'm a citizen and I'm not an American citizen," said Ignacio Lopez, a 32-year-old Chilean graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. Lopez signed a medical marijuana petition last month on the Pitt campus.

So did the 17-year old son of a University of Pittsburgh professor, who ended up being registered as a Republican at a Squirrel Hill polling place. The student, a minor, asked not to be identified, but the Post-Gazette was able to verify the fraudulent registration by examining county voter rolls.

Eric Verprauskus, another Pitt student, signed the petition and later received a voting registration card that lists him as Republican. "Whenever they changed it, they also screwed up my name," he said.

In two cases, people with strong anti-Republican inclinations found themselves turned into members of the GOP.

Suzanna Publicker spent a month registering new voters herself and is doing other field work for the Feminist Majority Foundation. When she was approached by the petition canvassers, she said, they presented her with a form that also called for her address, birthday and signature.

"They told me this elaborate lie that Pennsylvania requires you to fill out a form for your citizenship" when signing a petition, Publicker said.

Another unexpected Republican registration turned up under the name of David Schreiber. His father, Mark Schreiber, is former executive director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee. The elder Schreiber yesterday said his son had signed the petition and then had his voter registration switched without his knowledge.

Mark Wolosik, director of elections for Allegheny County, said party registration changes would not affect students' eligibility to vote until next year, when they would need to re-register with the Democratic party to vote in the 2005 Democratic primary. He advised anyone who believes their registration might have been tampered with to contact the elections office to verify their registration and polling place and then notify him by signed letter of any concerns.

While Rendell was asking for an investigation, the attorney general was warning the governor, as well as county elections boards and the state's 67 district attorneys, against possible intimidation by the state observers Rendell wants to place at the polls on Tuesday.

"If, in your judgment, an individual assigned to your county is in any way attempting to interfere with your duties or intimidating any county employee or citizen, you should report such conduct to your district attorney," Pappert wrote to election officials.

In a separate letter to Rendell, Pappert called the monitor program unprecedented and unnecessary.

"The monitors may misunderstand their role and end up, expressly or impliedly, intimidating local officials and interfering in the resolution of issues that these local officials have traditionally handled on their own," Pappert wrote.