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Author Topic: Siskiyou County reports of sheriff intimidating voters  (Read 3423 times)

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wizzards581

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Siskiyou County reports of sheriff intimidating voters
« on: June 08, 2016, 08:03:00 PM »
The state Attorney General’s Office representative s are in Siskiyou County today after reports Sheriff Jon Lopey has been intimidating residents of Hmong descent to keep them from voting in today’s election.

Representative s of the Secretary of State’s Office also went to the county to monitor voting there, said Rachele Huennekens, a spokeswoman for Attorney General’s Office.

“The California Attorney General’s office is assisting the Secretary of State’s office to monitor polling places in Siskiyou County, and ensure that all voters are able to cast their ballot free from intimidation, interference, or threats of violence,” Huennekens said.

“We are specifically monitoring reports of alleged voter intimidation among vulnerable minority populations, such as the Hmong community. Anyone who witnesses or is subject to voter intimidation should report it to the Secretary of State’s office,” she said.

Lori Shellenberger, the American Civil Liberties Union’s director of the California Voting Rights Project, said she was contacted last week by a representative of the Hmong community that residents were being intimidated by the Sheriff’s Office.

Shellenberger said the Sheriff’s Office set up a checkpoint outside a subdivision near Hornbrook and stopped cars being driven by Hmongs only and asked them whether they were registered to vote.

“I’m not aware of this happening in any other county. This is extreme,” Shellenberger said.

The Sheriff’s Office issued a press release Friday indicating state officials, deputies, as well as the District Attorney and other county officials, visited several communities investigating voter fraud.

The sheriff said they visited the Klamath Country Estates in the Hornbrook area, Mt. Shasta Vista and the Mt. Shasta Forest area outside McCloud.

The sheriff said some county ordinance violations were observed and some people were issued misdemeanor citations for those violations.

The press release did not say what the alleged violations entailed or whether any voter fraud was uncovered.

“While we encourage all eligible citizens to register and vote in the upcoming election, we are supportive of the state investigative efforts because deliberate voter fraud is a serious criminal offense and monitoring and enforcement serves to protect the integrity of our voter registration and elections’ systems,” Sheriff Lopey said in the press release.

Lopey was not available for comment Tuesday and has not returned a message left at his office.

Andy Fusso, founder of Siskiyou Forward, said the sheriff’s actions may be related to some measures on Tuesday’s ballot, including two that have to do with banning outdoor marijuana growing.

Another would raise the sales tax by a half cent in the county to raise money to build a new jail.

Fusso said law enforcement went to homes where people of Hmong descent lived and told people they could not vote.

 “The story is particularly disturbing because the people being targeted are refugees who came here to escape oppression. Many of them fought alongside the United States to promote democratic freedoms,” the ACLU said in its press release.

Janelle Vang, a spokeswoman for the Hmong community, said county and state officials showed up at homes carrying assault rifles “in hand.”

She said officials threatened to arrest people who tried to vote. Many did not turn out to vote Tuesday because they were afraid, she said.


Brian Ford, an attorney who represents the Hmong community, said the county has an issue with residency.

Some of the Hmongs don’t have a physical address for the property they own so they were providing an assessor’s parcel number or a description of the property location instead. He said county officials won’t accept that.

But Ford said both descriptions of residency — parcel number and location description — are valid to use to prove residency to vote.

Typically these issues are handled after an election, and if there is a residency problem the ballot is disqualified, Ford said. Residents are never jailed for paperwork errors, he said.

In this case the registrants were reported as suspicious and an investigation was started.

“These people just wanted to participate,” Ford said.

Shellenberger on Sunday sent an email to Helen Hutchinson, the president of the League of Women Voters of California, asking her to recruit observers to travel to Siskiyou County.

In a phone interview Hutchinson said voter fraud is “almost nonexistent,” and said she was skeptical of the assertions that anything illegal was going on in Siskiyou County.

“We are on record as saying that voter fraud is so rare as to be nonexistent,” she said.

Hutchinson forwarded the email from Shellenberger to Alice Bell, president of the League of Women Voters in the Redding Area, asking whether anyone from Shasta County could help in Siskiyou County.

“The sheriff is threatening to arrest Hmong community members who vote on Tuesday (there are nearly 1,000 or more Hmong people who have moved there),” Shellenberger said in her email to Hutchinson.

“There are lots of politics involved that I won’t go into here, but this sheriff is no joke and I have spent the weekend working to verify complaints and drill down on this,” Shellenberger said in her email.

Hutchinson said by phone that attempts to intimidate voters is unusual in California, but happens in other areas of the country. She said her agency gets involved to make sure voters have safe access to polling places.

Siskiyou County Elections Clerk Colleen Setzer said she didn’t want to comment on the sheriff’s investigation or the accusations of intimidation.

She did say she did find problems with voter registrations and she forwarded those on to the Secretary of State’s office because she has no investigative authority.

Representative s from the Secretary of State’s Office and the state Attorney General’s Office have been sent to Siskiyou County polling places to ensure people have access to vote, Shellenberger said.

Fusso said he and others recruited some 50 volunteer observers at various polling places in the county. Many members of the Hmong community registered to vote have been told at polling places they were not on the voter rolls, Fusso said.

Instead they were given provisional ballots, he said.

http://www.redding.com/news/local/Siskiyou-sheriff-accused-of-intimidating-voters-382134091.html?d=mobile



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Offline theking

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Re: Siskiyou County reports of sheriff intimidating voters
« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2016, 11:14:17 PM »

 “The story is particularly disturbing because the people being targeted are refugees who came here to escape oppression. Many of them fought alongside the United States to promote democratic freedoms,” the ACLU said in its press release.


I agree with the statement above, pretty sad all around if true...

If true, I think those involved in oppressing the Hmong should get fired immediately and serve some jail time... :knuppel2:



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bulbasaur

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Re: Siskiyou County reports of sheriff intimidating voters
« Reply #2 on: June 09, 2016, 12:06:43 AM »
It's those damn liberals and Democrats' fault!



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Offline Hung_Low

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Re: Siskiyou County reports of sheriff intimidating voters
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2016, 10:32:01 PM »
It's those damn liberals and Democrats' fault!

Isn't CA a democrats state?



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Offline Believe_N_Me

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Re: Siskiyou County reports of sheriff intimidating voters
« Reply #4 on: July 19, 2016, 01:39:19 AM »
The fact of the matter is that many Hmong do commit voter fraud, but not in the way that this article describes.

Most older generation Hmong do not speak English nor do they understand the American political arena. Often times they are lukewarm about the issues. The only time they care is if it means their SSI will be cut. Community organizers often take advantage of this by telling them who to vote for. These people make very uninformed votes.



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