No voter fraud in Orange Cove

Election office was notified after shouting match.

Thursday, Nov. 06, 2008

A ruckus at an Orange Cove polling place Tuesday apparently has been resolved with no immediate findings of voter fraud, Fresno County's elections chief said Wednesday.

Fresno County Clerk Victor Salazar said his office was contacted Tuesday about 10 a.m. after a shouting match broke out between a party of people including Orange Cove Mayor Victor Lopez, a Democrat, and Republican party observers.

It was enough of a problem that a Fresno County sheriff's deputy had to shuttle people involved outside temporarily. Salazar's office also asked the California Secretary of State's election fraud unit to dispatch an investigator to the polling site inside the Victor Lopez Community Center.

Salazar said he wasn't aware of any wrongdoing discovered by the fraud unit. "If there was fraudulent conduct, they would have taken direct action. I don't believe that happened."

Neither state elections officials nor Republican Party officials responded to calls seeking comment. But Mayor Lopez said the incident was blown out of proportion.

"As far as I'm concerned, nothing happened," said Lopez, who said he was only helping voters -- mostly senior citizens -- who had contacted him for assistance.

"People ask me all the time to help. Basically, they wanted help with some very complex propositions." He said he reads the propositions to them but insists the voters made their own decisions.

He said words were exchanged between him and a Republican Party observer who questioned him about what he was doing at the site.

Lopez said he thought at first it was an election worker. But he said the man had a badge that read "Official representative of the Republican Party."

Lopez said he told the man that he couldn't wear a badge advocating a party or campaign at the polling site. An election worker also took the man aside and told him he couldn't wear the badge, he said.

But Lopez denied that the confrontation escalated into an argument. And, he said, he did nothing wrong assisting voters.

Salazar said Elections Code 14282 allows voters to be assisted "by no more than two people who are not the voters' employer or an officer or agent of a union of which the voter is a member." However, the rules on what constitutes assistance are less clear.

Although not up for election, Lopez endorsed two incumbent City Council members on the ballot -- Diana Silva Guerra and Joel Lizaola. Silva and Lizaola appeared to have lost their races to Gilbert Garcia and Esther Gonzalez, both of whom have criticized Lopez's influence in Orange Cove. However, 40,000 absentee ballots in Fresno County have yet to be counted and provisional ballots have to be verified.