From an interview of
Gustavo Arellano at
KCRW:
“On the morning of November 8, you start getting all these phone calls from across Orange County, or specifically in the city of Santa Ana, like, ‘Hey, there's these police officers or security guards or just thugs outside voting precincts in heavily Latino districts holding up signs that are saying non-citizens cannot vote or asking people for their ID.’ … This was done at the behest of the Orange County Republican Party to influence the election for a vacant Assembly seat. Curt Pringle ended up winning by less than 1000 votes in that 1988 election.”
...
there were never any criminal charges filed, even though the state, the OC DEA, the FBI, the feds, they investigated it.
Although very tellingly in 1989, the year after this happened, then Governor George Deukmejian, a conservative Republican, signed into law a bill that outlawed uniform security guards being within 100 feet of any poll. … The Republican Party did end up having to pay about half a million dollars in fines, but it didn't kill the career of Curt Pringle, he ended up becoming the last Republican Speaker of the Assembly.”
(
Excerpts from various articles about the incident.)
