Senate Passes Measure to Bar Posting Guards at Voting Sites

Reacting to an incident at the polls in Santa Ana last year, the state Senate on Thursday approved legislation that would make it a crime to post security guards at voting sites without the permission of election officials.

Sen. Milton Marks (D-San Francisco), who authored the bill, said the measure was meant to prevent a repeat of what he termed the “disturbing episode” that occurred Nov. 8, when the Orange County Republican Party hired 20 uniformed guards to monitor Latinos as they went to the polls in Santa Ana.

Republican leaders said the guards were retained to watch for voter fraud after party officials heard persistent rumors that Democrats were going to bus non-citizens to the polls to vote illegally. GOP officials said the guards were given strict instructions not to interfere with voters and were pulled from their posts when the registrar of voters complained that their actions might intimidate Latinos legally registered to vote.

The bill would make it a felony or a misdemeanor, subject to the discretion of a judge, to hire or serve as a uniformed security guard within 100 feet of a polling place without written permission from the appropriate elections official. The measure also would prohibit anyone other than an elections official from receiving a ballot from a voter or asking a voter to turn over his or her ballot.

The legislation was approved on a vote of 22 to 2, one vote more than the majority needed for passage in the 40-member Senate. The bill was sent to the Assembly, where its first stop will be the Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments Committee.

That panel includes Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), on whose behalf the party hired the security guards.