Reactions to Republicans Posting Guards at the Polls

Hysteria prevails again, and the L.A. Times leads the way (“Fuentes Should Resign” Nov. 13). The Times, in regurgitating the Democrat sour grapes for losing a district they carved out for themselves, alleges Latinos were intimidated by the presence of uniformed security personnel at a number of polling places and as a result decided not to vote.

That is equivalent to claiming the presence of security guards at banks discourages people from going in to make deposits.

Law-abiding people are not discouraged from doing law-abiding things by the presence of security personnel. Only non-U.S. citizens would be intimidated by their presence at polling places, if they were going to try to vote.

I worked as a volunteer in the 72nd Assembly District for 6 years. I know non-U.S. citizens are registered and do vote there. Our voter registration system is an honor system. It’s assumed that if they sign the registration they are a citizen.

I believe a lot of the non-U.S. citizens that are registered to vote are innocent in that they were not told nor asked about the citizenship requirement.

The only way to protect the integrity of the ballot box is to try to discourage illegal voting from taking place. Since the state is not trying to do that, those candidates who could be victims of such illegal voting should have the right to do so.

The Republican Party and Mr. Fuentes should be congratulated for attempting to do that. For by protecting their candidates’ right to a fair election they have taken a step to protect the integrity of each U.S. citizen’s vote, for there is no guarantee that the vote being protected is going to a Democrat or Republican.

JIM ORR

Fountain Valley