Justice Department Owes Some Answers : Two years of probing and no action in controversial poll-guard case

The decision by the Justice Department not to prosecute in Orange County’s controversial poll-guard case raises more questions than it answers. After more than two years of investigation, federal officials announced that they had decided a criminal case was “just not prosecutable.” If so, why did it take the department so long to make that determination?

The department’s announcement understandably angered local prosecutors who have worked jointly on the case, and who were not given even the courtesy of advance notice of the decision. Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace Wade said charges may still be filed by his office. But the Justice Department’s handling of the case has delayed those local efforts, and raised the question of whether politics played a role at the federal level.

The case stems from a 1988 Election Day incident in which Orange County Republican Party officials hired uniformed security guards and stationed them at 20 Santa Ana precincts in largely Latino neighborhoods of the 72nd Assembly District. The GOP candidate narrowly won the race. GOP officials said guards were needed because the party feared voter fraud, but later apologized. Latino voters in particular had complained that they felt intimidated.

A civil suit brought by five Latinos eventually was settled in 1989 for $400,000. But the incident has been an embarrassment for the Republican Party at all levels because much has been made of GOP efforts to woo Latino voters. As one state GOP official said at the time, it was a “terrible, terrible symbolic insult.”

The Justice Department declined further comment on its reasons for not proceeding with the case, but a letter to Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) last fall from U.S. Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Bruce C. Navarro may shed some light on the matter. Navarro said that the only federal statute that seemed applicable penalized acts of voter intimidation only if they were “intended to affect the way in which victims vote for candidates running for federal office.” But if voters were intimidated for a state race, wouldn’t they also be for federal races, which were on the same ballot?

Indeed, U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts thought so when he refused to dismiss the civil suit. He said the mere act of intimidation, if proved, was sufficient to support allegations of federal Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act violations--even if not one person did not vote because of it.

The Justice Department’s puzzling decision needs more explaining.