Latino Groups Form Legal Team to Press Voter Abuse Claims

A coalition of Latino leaders announced Thursday it has formed a legal team to investigate allegations that voters were harassed, intimidated and--in some cases--turned away from the voting booth Tuesday by poll workers.

The group--which includes Hermandad Mexicana Nacional--will seek a Department of Justice investigation, coalition members said during a news conference Thursday. Hermandad itself was accused of election day wrongs four years ago, but after a yearlong inquiry a grand jury declined to return indictments against the organization.

Hermandad, the Orange County Central Labor Council and other groups said they began receiving calls Wednesday morning from Latino voters complaining they’d been turned away from polling locations because their names weren’t on the registration list or told the location had run out of ballots.

Poll workers failed in some cases to inform voters of alternative voting locations or seemed uncertain when ballots might arrive, they said. Latino voters are particularly vulnerable because, in many cases, the voting process is new and unfamiliar turf.

“I don’t think this is a deliberate attempt against Latino voters,” said Santa Ana school board president John Palacio, a member of the coalition. “I think the problem is that the workers are not being properly trained and that the registrar’s office does not have the proper staffing and resources.”

Palacio said the coalition will file a complaint with the county registrar of voters once it has completed its investigation.

Registrar Rosalyn Lever, though, said she had received only one election day complaint, a call from a Santa Ana voter who asked that her poll be kept open until 10 p.m. so that she could vote.

But Sal Tinajero, who was elected to the Santa Ana school board in Tuesday’s election, said poll workers at the Boys & Girls Club on West Highland Street were “rude” and “aggressive.” He said several voters walked away in frustration.

“There were five people that night at that polling place who did not get to vote,” Tinajero said. “There were even fluent English-speaking people who walked out saying, ‘Those were the rudest people I’ve ever seen.’ . . . These people working are volunteers, they are supposed to help voters.”

Such accusations are not new to Santa Ana. Similar complaints have been raised in nearly every election since 1988, when Republicans hired uniformed security guards to patrol polling places throughout the city. It’s something the county is acutely aware of, Lever said.

“We’ve had sensitivity training for all our inspectors and poll workers,” the registrar said. “We’ve had it in writing, and we’ve had presentations and training probably since 1989. We have Spanish-speaking and Vietnamese-speaking poll workers in places where community groups have told us they would like them.”

For Miguel Jimenez, the voting process wasn’t intimidating as much as it was grueling

Jimenez said he arrived at Teen Challenge on South Main Street at 9 a.m. to vote, but was told the ballots hadn’t arrived. He said workers rattled off the locations of three other polling places. He said poll workers wouldn’t let him vote at the first two and that he never did find the third.

After being directed to a local senior citizen center, where he again was not allowed to vote, Jimenez said he returned to Teen Challenge. The ballots arrived shortly after noon, and he said he was finally allowed to vote four hours after his quest began.

“I don’t know what to think,” said Jimenez, who works for a local Spanish-language paper. “But I am worried that this kind of thing happens in the Latino community, and when the race between candidates is so tight, the votes are very important.”

They may be particularly important for Santa Ana school board incumbent Nativo Lopez, a local director of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional. Lopez--still locked in a tight race for a seat on the board with fellow board member Audrey Yamagata-Noji--is relying on absentee and provisional ballot votes. Registrar’s office tallies this week show him 131 votes behind Yamagata-Noji. Lever said absentee ballots should be counted by Tuesday, but the provisional ballot tally may not come until early December.