Go After the Agency Behind Illegal Voting

Every year, hundreds of thousands of immigrants swear allegiance to the United States and take their place as new American citizens. Often they look for assistance from organizations with experience and expertise in the long and arduous naturalization process.

In Orange County, many Latino immigrants have looked to Hermandad Mexicana Nacional for such help. Tragically, several hundred new and would-be Americans who placed their trust in this self-professed immigrant rights organization apparently were misled and now face investigation and possible punishment for voter fraud.

Hermandad, a longtime provider of citizenship classes, job training and other services to Orange County’s Latino community, also is being investigated by the Orange County district attorney and the California secretary of state on suspicion of registering several hundred noncitizens to vote, many of whom actually voted before being sworn in as citizens.

According to Secretary of State Bill Jones, 721 out of the initial review of the first 1,160 people registered by Hermandad last year had not completed the citizenship process when they registered to vote. Investigators contend that 442 of them voted illegally in the November election. The scale of suspected fraud has led Jones to order a review of all 1.3 million names on Orange County’s voter rolls.

The Times contacted some of those individuals, one of whom said, “I was asked to sign some papers and told to register for voting. They told me to remember that I was already registered and not to register again after I was sworn in.” Other noncitizens described being told by Hermandad staffers that they were eligible to vote.

This fits the pattern described by former Hermandad clients: After finishing their INS interviews at Hermandad, they were taken through a line to sign various papers, including voter registration cards already filled out by Hermandad staffers who neglected to disclose that assistance, another potential violation of law.

Hermandad leaders boast of creating “2,000 citizens a month.” Last year, they reported registering 3,500 new citizens to vote and collecting 8,500 vote-by-mail ballots. Now they ask the public to believe that if their clients registered and in many cases voted illegally, it was on their own initiative, without any involvement by the experienced Hermandad staffers who hovered over them. This shifting of blame is beneath contempt.

There is, as the ancient Greeks said, “a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust,” and justice would not be served by victimizing these individuals further. No doubt they were misled into thinking that they were doing the right thing by registering and voting. They trusted the people at Hermandad and instead were exploited to advance a political agenda. I hope common sense and decency prevail and these aspiring Americans receive a better deal from the legal authorities than they got from Hermandad.

While there is an urge by some to rally ‘round Hermandad, it is a pity their energy and rhetoric seems entirely directed at defending Hermandad’s leaders, not its victims.

Particularly disturbing are self-serving attempts by Hermandad leaders and their allies to inflame this into a racial issue, hurling the epithet “Latino basher” at anyone who dares to complain that the integrity of the vote has been deliberately compromised.

Hermandad leader Nativo Lopez is attempting to obscure the issue by claiming that the investigation is part of a Republican conspiracy to prevent Latinos from becoming citizens.

“They are afraid of the Latino vote,” Lopez told one reporter. “They know what awaits them in 1998.”

What nonsense. Republicans concede the Latino vote to no one. We believe that all citizens, naturalized or native-born, bear a civic obligation to register and vote. That is what makes vigilance against voter fraud so important. Illegal votes devalue the ballots of all law-abiding citizens, whether they belong to the native Californian voting in his 12th presidential election or the new citizen from Michoacan exercising her franchise for the first time.

Whatever happens, the Hermandad scandal must not deter increased political participation by new citizens, Latino and all other immigrants. Legal immigration benefits America, and history will show this current phase of immigration is no different. The more fully all immigrants are enmeshed in the life of our nation, the more enriched we all are. Even as we criticize Hermandad’s machinations, we have a responsibility to reach out to those seeking citizenship and help them along the road to becoming Americans.