Wearing “Neighborhood Vote Protector” caps, volunteers walked East LA’s Whittier Boulevard on Election Day, keeping watch for any signs of potential voter intimidation. They distributed voter rights information and directed residents to the nearby polling center at Arts in Action Middle School.
The volunteers were there to observe, document and report any form of voter suppression. Ultimately, no major interference at local and statewide polling places was reported, but volunteers found it meaningful to show up for their neighbors.
“It’s important to come out and … show that we will not be intimidated, that we will not back down, that we have this right to vote,” said Maria Brenes of El Sereno. “This is a show of force that we are united. We will not be intimidated.”
The volunteers working in East LA were trained at InnerCity Struggle, one of multiple groups around California organizing residents to monitor polls amid a push from the Trump administration to deploy federal election observers to cities like Los Angeles. The U.S. Department of Justice argued the deployment was necessary to maintain “election transparency,” but State Attorney General Rob Bonta called it a “source of interference.”
“We’ll have our observers on site keeping an eye on your monitors,” Bonta said on social media on Tuesday.
John Harris, of Montebello, was one of them.
Harris said his family’s history in the Jim Crow South compelled him to protect the rights of voters in East LA. In pursuit of freedom, he said his family “felt they needed to come here.”
“All those subtle ways that you can intimidate by what you’re wearing, how you show up, what sort of questions you ask, they may be different issues for the Latino community here in LA, but it’s the same type of issue for me in terms of my family’s history and understanding what it looks like when you are being intimidated from exercising the rights that you have,” said Harris.
Community poll monitoring was also in response to a surge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California that immigrant rights advocates described as a move to “suppress civic participation and divide our neighborhoods.” Advocates feared the presence of ICE would scare Latinos who were eligible to vote away from the polls. ICE agents have recently been spotted capturing people at the East LA Civic Center near Belvedere Park Lake.
Concerns about ICE agents showing up near polling locations drove the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network at Proyecto Pastoral to send election observers to monitor activity near vote centers on Monday and Tuesday at Weingart East LA YMCA, Tenrikyo Church and Ramon Garcia Recreation Center.
They monitored for potential voter intimidation and for anyone blocking voter access.
“Everything went smooth,” said Enrique Velasquez, an organizer with Proyecto Pastoral. “There were no incidents at all. No ICE presence. That was one of our main concerns and no intimidation, no harassment.”
Aaron Robertson, a director at Catalyst California, a nonprofit that spearheaded the training with InnerCity Struggle, said vote protectors reported seeing DOJ monitors in Long Beach and other parts of LA County.
Federal monitors, Robertson said, were largely in the background and did not interfere with or intimidate voters. Other incidents reported from LA polling sites involved a person in MAGA clothing making voters uncomfortable and another person berating voters to vote a certain way in the ballot measures.
Robertson credited the LA County Registrar of Voters’ election resource liaison program with de-escalating these kinds of situations. “When our vote protectors reported something … we were able to really quickly call the election resource liaisons.”
The campaign, known as “Can’t Stop California,” held statewide vote protector trainings in Boyle Heights, Koreatown, the Inland Empire and the San Fernando Valley.
“As we look back the day after, we’re really celebrating this as a victory of ordinary people over corruption and interference,” Robertson said.
“We were prepared for all kinds of escalation and interference, and because we saw Californians bravely turn out at such great levels, I think that really deterred larger efforts of intimidation of interference,” he added.
