Election Investigators Accused of Threats

A local Latino rights group under investigation for alleged voting irregularities alleged Friday that the Orange County district attorney’s office and secretary of state have unlawfully threatened people with loss of citizenship, deportation and loss of their jobs if they do not cooperate.

Officials of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional held up two affidavits--with the names blocked out to protect privacy--of people they say were contacted by investigators and intimidated.

Nativo Lopez, executive director of Hermandad’s Santa Ana office, said that his organization has logged about 20 calls alleging such tactics and that about half the callers had gone through Hermandad programs.

“We think it’s very important that the public know this is occurring,” Lopez said.

Hermandad attorney Mark S. Rosen said he planned on handing the affidavits over to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

For more than a month, the district attorney and secretary of state have been investigating allegations of voter fraud and voting by noncitizens in the November election, triggered by a complaint by defeated Garden Grove Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan.

Earlier this month, investigators shut down Hermandad offices in Santa Ana and confiscated computers and other documents.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Wallace Wade said he has not spoken with his investigators about the interviews, but was confident no one had been threatened.

“We are trying to get information from people,” Wade said, “and the way to get information from people is to treat them with dignity.”

The undersecretary of state, Rob Lapsley, also dismissed Hermandad’s allegations, saying that everybody who works for his agency is held to standards of integrity and honesty and is carefully screened.

“My initial reaction,” he said, “is to say that Hermandad Mexicana Nacional’s leadership is getting desperate.”

Also Friday, Rosen said he had filed a motion in Orange County Superior Court earlier this week to retrieve computers and other materials seized from Hermandad.

And Hermandad officials said they would begin distributing 50,000 bumper stickers in Southern California, mostly through Latino rights organizations, that read “Boycott L.A. Times” for its coverage of the issue.