SPECIAL REPORTS * Preserving ties to their heritage as they move to largely white suburbs can be difficult for black families. Cultural challenges of another sort await Latinos learning the ropes of voting, U.S.-style. : Despite a Few Glitches, the Vote Goes On

In the shadow of a downtown freeway interchange, there was a polling place where the American flag did not fly during Tuesday’s election.

It wasn’t because so many of the people who live in this mostly Spanish-speaking neighborhood are citizens of other countries. Nor was it because the poll workers at the precinct were less than patriotic--definitely not.

The flag did not fly Tuesday over Precinct 9007542 in the Pico-Union district because of a simple bureaucratic glitch, the sort that plagues polling places even in the suburbs: The county forgot to send one out.

“It didn’t come in our packet,” poll inspector Pat Diaz said, gesturing at an empty box at the Norwood Elementary School Library. The signs announcing “Polling Place” had been included, along with all the necessary ballots and the voting guides in Vietnamese, Tagalog and the other languages spoken in our polyglot metropolis. But Old Glory itself was a no-show. An accident.

Still, the missing Stars and Stripes was an apt metaphor for the eccentric way American democracy is spreading through the most heavily immigrant, most “foreign” neighborhood in California, the place in the United States with the lowest proportion of registered voters.

In years past, thieves have stolen the flag from Precinct 9007542. (A relatively minor crime in a neighborhood where several competing gangs claim turf.)

The last time residents voted here--in a January special election for the state Assembly--the poll workers displayed the flag near the door so that they could keep an eye on it.

Then a supervisor from the county registrar’s office told them to put it closer to the street, where it would better serve its purpose as a beacon guiding lost voters to the ballot box.

On Tuesday, despite the missing flag, plenty of voters did manage to find their way to the polling place at Norwood Elementary and the half-dozen other precincts serving the Pico-Union community, stretching from the Convention Center to MacArthur Park and Koreatown.

Many, like Jorge Diaz, cast their ballots with a great sense of purpose. A recently naturalized citizen, he had come with his wife to vote against Proposition 227, the anti-bilingual education initiative.

He spoke Spanish with a South American accent. I asked him where he was from originally.

“Ecuador,” he said.

“Oh, so you’re an Ecuadorean,” I said with a smile.

“We were Ecuadoreans,” Diaz answered. “Now we’re Americans.”

And, as an American, he simply didn’t understand the initiative. “In every other country of the world speaking two languages is an advantage,” he said in Spanish. “We should all speak two languages. Even three.”

At the Grandview Apartments just across the street from MacArthur Park, 66-year-old Salvador Diaz (no relation) wanted to vote against Proposition 227 too--so much so that he tried to cast his ballot twice. He corralled me on the street outside the polling place, asking for help.

“I want to vote on this,” he said in Spanish, showing me a pale green voting guide with a smiling portrait of Gray Davis. He pointed to Mr. Davis’ recommended “No on 227.” “But the lady working here told me I couldn’t vote on that proposition.”

We walked together to the polling station inside the apartment complex, where he repeated his allegation. I translated to the four election workers, but stopped when it became clear that all but one understood Spanish. Diaz said he had cast his ballot but been unable to vote on Proposition 227 because “the lady said I couldn’t.”

“Senor,” the poll inspector said in calm, even Spanish. “No one can tell you how to vote.”

The woman who had helped Diaz vote the first time was gone, off to translate at another precinct.

After a few moments, the real source of Mr. Diaz’s confusion became clear. “I’m illiterate,” he blurted out. Analfabeto. “By pure luck I was able to make out Gray Davis’ name.” Everything else was a blur.

The poll workers shrugged. There was nothing more to be done. In America you can’t vote twice. You have to get it right the first time.

In most Latin American countries ballots contain either pictures of the candidate or the brightly colored flags of each political party, precisely because so many people can’t read or write. But here in the United States the ballot is a mass of words. The official “voting guide”--a prolix assemblage of legalisms--only adds to the confusion.

Some poll workers have reported similar incidents of confusion as large numbers of naturalized citizens vote for the first time. Although the vast majority of the new Americans cast their ballots without difficulty, a few seem utterly perplexed.

Poll inspector Jorge Munoz, 27, a Pico-Union resident and veteran of about 10 elections there, has seen new citizens so naive about the American political process that they ask poll workers advice on how to vote.

“Sometimes it gets on my nerves,” Munoz said. “They say, ‘I need some help. Who should I vote for? Is this candidate good?’ I tell them, ‘Just vote with your heart.’ They end up voting by the last name. If there’s a Latino candidate, they’ll vote for them.”

This time, the election proceeded rather smoothly for Munoz at a precinct set up in the Kolping House, a German cultural center located, rather incongruously, in a largely Central American neighborhood just a few blocks from the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Union Avenue.

By contrast, in February’s election, voting at another neighborhood precinct that Munoz staffed was temporarily interrupted when the police apprehended some seedy characters across the street.

“You have the transients yelling at the corner, the wine drinkers getting carried away,” he said of Tuesday’s primary. “But it’s pretty much the normal thing.”

Down the street, voters interested in boning up on the issues before casting their ballots could pick up copies of the Spanish-language daily La Opinion, which published a popular voting guide.

“California va a las urnas,” La Opinion declared in a banner headline. California Goes to the Polls. But lower down on the front page were two stories that hinted at other concerns La Opinion readers might have, quite apart from democracy and elections: “INS Clarifies Rules on Workplace Raids” and “Five Arrested for Smuggling Immigrants.”

It is a long-established truth in these neighborhoods that, for most residents, interacting with the government means not a trip to the ballot box or City Hall but rather a visit to the downtown Federal Building and the offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Donato Aparicio has never set foot in an American voting booth, even though, on Tuesday, he was working at a liquor store and meat market--Carniceria Familar--just across the street from a polling place on Union.

Asked about the various candidates running in the election, Aparicio had absolutely no opinion. “I can’t vote,” he said flatly. A native of Mexico, he’s not a citizen, although he might become one soon.

“I already put in my application,” he said. “I’ve been waiting eight months, a year now. According to the news, they’re going to try to speed things up.”

Later, standing on 6th Street by the American flag that marked the way to the polling place inside the Grandview Apartments, I met two women who asked me for help.

Unlike Salvador Diaz, they did not want to vote, although they did have official business with their government.

They showed me an address on a business card. I gave them directions in Spanish to a building just two blocks away. They thanked me and walked off, leaving the Stars and Stripes behind, heading toward the Mexican Consulate, where another flag, the eagle and serpent of the Republic of Mexico, flapped in the breeze.