Democrats to Watch Polling Places : Voting: Party’s plan follows 1988 O.C. controversy over GOP-hired ‘guards’ outside balloting stations.

Democratic Party officials announced an ambitious effort to monitor voting activity in Orange County and across the nation on Election Day to prevent any intimidation of newly registered minority voters.

The party unveiled its “election watch” program in dual press conferences in Los Angeles and Orange County, where a 1988 controversy erupted over Republican-hired “poll guards” carrying signs in Spanish and English that read: “Non-citizens can’t vote.”

Orange County Republican officials reacted harshly to the Democratic plan. “This is obviously a press stunt,” said Tom Fuentes, county GOP chairman.

“It’s smoke and mirrors for the sake of perpetuating a myth. I don’t think the Orange County electorate is going to buy it this time, just as they have rejected these manipulations and false allegations time and time again.”

Philip Recht, the Clinton campaign’s state legal counsel, said the effort in all 50 states will feature volunteers monitoring polling places and reporting any problems to teams of lawyers versed in voting-rights laws, who will be manning Democratic offices. Any problems would be reported immediately to police, and legal action would be taken if necessary. More than 100 attorneys are helping the Democrats statewide.

Democratic officials hope the monitoring program will eliminate any intimidation that could keep new voters--many of them immigrants who registered to vote in recent months as part of a massive Democratic drive--from visiting their polling place, Recht said.

“Many of the new registrants are new citizens and first-time voters, persons who are particularly susceptible to intimidation tactics, persons who are not necessarily familiar with the voting process,” he said.

Recht said the effort will also attempt to ensure that polling places operate properly, such as opening on time and not closing early.

The Democratic effort is not associated with a U.S. Department of Justice plan, which is expected to be officially announced today, to target Orange County as one of several places nationwide to monitor voting activity. Recht said, however, that he hopes any federal authorities deployed in Orange County and other sites would prove helpful if problems are detected by the Democratic effort.

In the last presidential election, poll guards were hired by the Orange County Republican Party and the campaign of GOP Assembly candidate Curt Pringle. Although they insisted the uniformed security personnel were intended simply to keep non-citizens from voting, opponents maintained in a lawsuit that the guards were posted at 20 polling places in Santa Ana to intimidate Latinos, many of whom are Democrats. The lawsuit was settled out of court, with Pringle’s campaign and the GOP paying $400,000.

Ruben Martinez, co-chairman of a group organizing Latinos in Orange County for Clinton, said he and others have “concerns that this awful incident might occur again.”

Republican Chairman Fuentes, however, said that “such rhetoric is pure demagoguery.”

“This 1988 issue they continue to bring up was reviewed by the FBI and district attorney and all other forms of agencies and they determined that no act of intimidation ever occurred,” Fuentes said. “It was purely a (state Assembly Speaker) Willie Brown-financed and -inspired publicity stunt in 1988 and this is more of the same.”

He also said the only convictions that resulted from the 1988 episode involved a participant in the Democrat-paid registration effort. “Shame on them,” Fuentes said. “That’s where the scandal was. The registration of illegal non-citizens is a truly abusive scandal and threatens the sanctity of the ballot box.”

Fuentes added that he has “full confidence” in the county registrar of voters to conduct “a fair and honest election.”

But several Democratic leaders at the Orange County Hall of Administration press conference suggested potential remains for abuse. Clinton supporters from the Latino and Vietnamese communities cited several recent incidents of harassment they suggested could be harbingers of potential problems on Election Day.

Martinez said the Clinton headquarters in Santa Ana has been hit by intruders who open the doors and yell racial slurs. Dinh Kim Le, treasurer of the Vietnamese American Committee for Clinton, said volunteers manning voter registration tables in Westminster’s Little Saigon have been harassed and he has received threatening phone calls.