Low-turnout districts in SE Los Angeles county have chronic political corruption

[alp227]

The Los Angeles Times reports in "Casting a vote for chaos":

...in the small, scandal-plagued cities of southeast Los Angeles County. Whether in Montebello, Bell, Lynwood or almost any of their heavily immigrant, mostly Latino neighboring cities, elections are frequent, intensely fought and decided by tiny fractions of the population. The combination, experts say, contributes to chronic political unrest and opens the way to repeated incidents of corruption.

A Times analysis of voting records found that elections in these cities were more likely to have extremely low turnout than those elsewhere in Los Angeles County.

At the same time, these communities are hotbeds for politicking and electioneering. Even as the vast majority sits on the sidelines, a few political players engage in a frenzy of electoral activities, a merry-go-round of special elections and recalls that sweep many of the same faces — or members of the same families — in and out of office.

These elections are often swiftly followed by allegations of voting fraud, which are investigated by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Of the roughly 160 complaints clearly identified as involving elections in Los Angeles County's 88 cities in the last decade, roughly one-third involved a dozen southeast cities.

The Bell city council members got high salaries enabled by extremely low voter turnout:

The criminal charges in Bell focus in part on high salaries earned by top administrators and council members. Those salaries were made possible by a ballot measure that was approved in a 2005 election in which only 390 people — fewer than 2% of the voting age population — cast ballots.

That was the lowest turnout for any election in southeast Los Angeles County the last six years, but not by much. For last year's South Gate City Council election, 3% of the voting-age population turned out. And a 2007 recall election in Montebello drew 5% of the voting-age population.

The 2005 Bell election was held on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and only one item was on the ballot: Measure A, a proposal to convert from a general law city to a charter city, which allowed city officials to sidestep limits on their salaries.

The timing of the election — on a day when few residents might be expected to be focused on politics — is no anomaly. The low-turnout special elections and recalls that are fixtures of the southeastern Los Angeles County cities often are scheduled for days that could be expected to keep turnout low.

Income and immigration status are the major factors:

The Times analysis looked at turnout as a percentage of the adult residents of the city to get a sense of overall degree of civic participation. Many cities in the southeastern part of the county have large populations of immigrants who are not citizens and cannot vote, reducing the potential voter pool, but turnouts are more robust for balloting held on regular election days.

Outside the southeastern corridor, Rosemead and Monterey Park, which also have sizable immigrant populations, have seen their voting-age participation in recent local elections hover around 15%. In more affluent cities, including Beverly Hills, Claremont and Cerritos, by contrast, nearly one-quarter of the voting-age population participated in local elections.

Also, the very few voters in those districts cause everything to swing back and forth over and over again:

Although few people vote in cities in southeast Los Angeles County, the politics are nonetheless intense, with politicians and special interests engaging in dozens of recalls and recall attempts.

In Montebello, three council members have been recalled in two elections since 2007. There have also been recall elections in the last four years in Commerce, Lynwood and Maywood.

Commerce, a largely industrial city with a population of about 13,000, has been through a municipal game of musical chairs. Mayor Tina Baca Del Rio was ousted in a recall election in November 2008 by a margin of fewer than 40 votes. Voters sent her back to office four months later. The city's cost for the most recent recall election was nearly $22,000.

These are just excerpts in a very in-depth article. Does it take this much of a news report to teach people what happens when they don't vote? What about the Chimp-in-Chief? I recently attended a "Rock the Vote" event at my college, and one of my friends delivered a speech about the importance of voting. He didn't get a lot of applause as there should've been; most of the attendees were there more because the organizers scheduled a rapper to perform at Rock the Vote.

[Historic NY]

1. they need to be educated that if they don't vote the same crap will happen over & over.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. If you are not a citizen you cannot vote

That's a class I felony iirc. These cities have a very high percentage of people who cannot vote. They will, as soon as they take that oath. Read what you posted.