Latinos Urge Charges Over Poll Guards : Voting: Uniformed poll-watchers used in last year’s election haven’t been forgotten by activists. They are keeping pressure on the GOP with a lawsuit and a vigil.

Latino community activists, still angry over the county Republican Party’s use of uniformed security guards at polling places last November, are pushing the district attorney’s office to file criminal charges against GOP officials who the activists say hired the guards to intimidate Latino voters.

Nearly a year has passed since the election in the 72nd Assembly District, in which Garden Grove Republican Curt Pringle narrowly defeated Democrat Christian (Rick) Thierbach. The district attorney’s office and the FBI are investigating whether the posting of 20 guards at 20 polls in Santa Ana violated state or federal law by intimidating Latino voters. No charges have been filed.

The county Republican Party has said it hired the guards only to observe and report election fraud. They were summoned at the suggestion of a Pringle political consultant in response, the GOP said, to rumors that Democrats might bus in illegal voters to tip the contest in Thierbach’s favor.

A civil lawsuit filed against Pringle and Republican officials by six voters who confronted the guards at the polls is moving toward trial in federal court in January. A key plaintiff has been dismissed, however, and two of the defendants have settled.

Prominent Latinos are planning a press conference Monday at the County Hall of Administration in Santa Ana to demand an explanation of why no criminal charges have been filed. Other Latino and Democratic activists are organizing a candlelight vigil Wednesday night--exactly one year after the polls closed--outside Pringle’s Garden Grove office to call attention to his use of the guards, who carried signs in Spanish warning that non-citizens cannot legally vote.

Paul Garza, executive director of the Orange County Democratic Party, said using the guards was “an intentional strategy to win that seat.”

The pace of the criminal investigation reflects a bid by Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks, a Republican, “to make it harder to prosecute those involved,” Garza said.

“The district attorney should be above politics,” Garza said. “Why has nothing been done? They are treating this as a very partisan issue. They want to protect the Republicans involved. It’s very clear. There’s no other explanation.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade, who is assigned to the investigation, rejected Garza’s allegation, saying: “He doesn’t know what we know and what we’re considering. He doesn’t have all the facts.”

Wade confirmed that his office and the FBI are still gathering evidence on possible violations of state and federal laws, but he would not elaborate.

Garza said many observers are worried that the chance to charge those responsible might evaporate when the one-year statute of limitations expires Wednesday. But Wade said many state and federal charges that could pertain to the case can be filed two years or more after the incident.

Greg Haskin, executive director of the Orange County Republican Party, said the mounting pressure for criminal charges illustrates that “the Democrats have been on a witch hunt and have found no witches. This is nothing more than a big publicity stunt.”

Haskin said the Republican Party’s suspicions about voter fraud in the election were not entirely unfounded. He pointed to Clifford Martens, a Huntington Beach man charged with illegally registering 21 Democrats to vote in the November, 1988, election, most of them in the 72nd Assembly District. A preliminary hearing is under way in Martens’ case in Municipal Court.

Haskin said the civil suit over the poll-guards incident is “falling apart.”

The move to drop one of the main plaintiffs, Rumaldo Madrid, indicates the weakness of the Democrats’ case, Haskin said. Madrid was the only one of the six plaintiffs who contended that pressure from the guards prompted him to leave without voting. The other five cast their ballots.

But Joseph Remcho, one of the attorneys representing the Latino voters, disagreed, saying he is still confident that he can win his case.

Madrid was dropped from the case last week because it became evident that he could not identify the guards who challenged him at the poll as being the same ones who had been hired by the county Republican Party, Remcho said.

He does not need to prove that harassment forced voters to leave the poll without voting, Remcho said. To win a civil rights claim, he said, he must show only that the guards were stationed at the polls to intimidate Latino voters.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Jan. 16 before U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts in Santa Ana. Among the defendants are Pringle, Haskin, the county Republican Party’s Central Committee and the state GOP.

Saddleback Security Services, the private firm that supplied the guards, was a defendant, but it paid $60,000 in July to settle its portion. County Registrar of Voters Donald Tanney has agreed to settle the suit against him by paying $20,000 to retrain precinct workers. That proposal must still be approved by Judge Letts.

Rueben Martinez, one of the organizers of the candlelight vigil, said he believes that the Republicans used the guards because they saw that Democrats had undertaken a huge effort to register Latinos to vote.

“They were afraid of losing, so they resorted to intimidation,” Martinez said. “For so many years we’ve worked to get our people to vote. Finally, the wheels start turning, and we’ve got these police-looking guards at the polls asking people questions.

“I don’t want this to be forgotten.”