Poll Guard Dispute Heats Up Again : ‘I Got Scared . . . Just Came Home’

“He kind of scared me,” recalled Jane Fantauzzi, 74. “I was tempted not to vote because I was scared, and I knew there was something going on wrong.”

Fantauzzi said she has frequently worked at the polls and never knew a uniformed guard to be present. “I know the regulations,” she said.

“I got scared, and I just came home,” she said. “I thought something was wrong in Denmark.”

Now Fantauzzi is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Orange County Republican Party over its use of guards at polling places in Santa Ana precincts in November.

In an interview Tuesday, she said a uniformed guard barred her from entering the polling place and told her to wait outside.

Fantauzzi, who was born in New Mexico and is of Latino descent, said she waited, reciting the Rosary, for more than half an hour before she tried to vote at about 10:30 a.m.

Even earlier on Election Day, Fantauzzi said, she had walked to the polling place at Santa Ana Senior Citizens Center at 3rd and Ross streets and returned home after seeing signs that warned non-citizens not to vote. The signs were carried to the polling places by the guards at the request of the county GOP.

Later, she said, “I thought, ‘Who are they to keep me from voting?’ I’ve been voting since I was 21 years old. I’m very proud of being able to vote.”

So she returned and finally voted, after waiting outside.

“I don’t want it to happen again,” Fantauzzi said.

The county registrar of voters’ inspector at the senior citizens center, William Edwards, confirmed Fantauzzi’s account that she was stopped at the door and asked to wait outside. Edwards said he asked the private guard, whom he described as “well behaved,” to help him direct people to chairs in an outdoor area to wait because people were backed up inside, waiting to vote.

“We didn’t want them standing up all day,” said Edwards, who added that he appreciated the help of the guard at the busy polling time.

Edwards said the guard “helped regulate the flow.”

Santa Ana mayoral candidate Sadie Reid-Benham said several weeks ago that a uniformed guard at the same senior citizens center had ordered her to produce personal identification before she voted. Reid-Benham said that when a poll worker recognized her, “the guard then backed off and became friendly.”

She voted and left but said she thought it had been “all very unusual.”