Pringle on Voter Registration Fraud

* Does anybody remember 1988? I was only 17, but remember well Curt Pringle’s uniformed goon squads being exposed after election day for intimidating Latino voters at the polls. In his Column Right of April 22, Pringle counts on readers to forget his bigoted history as he seemingly defends the Latino voters of Orange County for recent troubles and aims his ire at the organizations that both register and provide valuable assimilation services to them, like Hermandad Mexicana Nacional. This is pretty disingenuous posturing coming from the man who first made famous the desire to keep Latinos from the polls.

He says the problem is voter fraud, not the general desire of new citizens to vote. I am so glad to hear of his conversion. Was it not fraudulent to parade rent-a-thugs around the polls in 1988, having them assume the phony roles of authority figures and poll workers?

I hope others read through Pringle’s attack on voter fraud for what it really is--an attempt to defame organizations that have thus far been proven to do nothing more than defeat him or soften his margin of victory in the past.

TODD FLORA

Yorba Linda

* The issue of voter fraud in Orange County is only part of a long-ignored problem of the unknown accuracy of our voter registration system. California secretaries of state have repeatedly sidestepped the issue way before Bill Jones came on the scene. I fear that Jones’ request for citizenship records of over a million voters is irresponsible political doublespeak. With such little chance of being completed (let alone accurately completed), such a request allows him to sound tough yet do nothing.

A statistical approach is much more reasonable. My understanding of polling statistics gives a study of 1,000 random voters about a 3% error. So if we carefully checked the records of 1,000 voters, we would have a solid estimate of the accuracy of the rolls, quickly and economically. With the minimal controls on voter records we have in California, I would be surprised if the proportion of improperly registered voters wasn’t many times the 3% error.

What to do with the information, once we get it is another problem completely. However, the people have a right to know that our elections are confined to eligible voters. Without evidence of widespread organized fraud, I think the vote in any election must stand. The final decision in baseball is given to the umpire, not because he never makes a mistake but because a final decision in a timely manner is more important. Sorry, Mr. Dornan.

JOSEPH AREEDA

Los Angeles