Letter tries to shame voters in L.A.
No one knows who sent mailers to some homes in school board Districts 4 and 6.
Offended, harassed, violated. Those are some of the words voters used to describe their reactions to a letter they received this week from a group calling itself the California Voter Awareness Project.
Several people who spoke to The Times said the letter arrived just hours before polls opened in Tuesday’s citywide election in Los Angeles, and included each recipient’s voting history in the last three elections, along with names and addresses of neighbors and acquaintances and whether or not they’d voted.
An updated chart would be mailed out after Tuesday’s election, the letter warned, and “other people you know will all know who voted and who did not vote.”
Exactly who sent the mailer and why is unclear: No return address or contact information was on the envelopes.
The Times spoke to nearly a dozen people who received the letter and verified their addresses. All of them live in District 4 or District 6 in the Los Angeles Unified School District — school board seats in both were up for election Tuesday. Charter school advocates and teachers unions are waging expensive fights trying to influence who wins those seats.
It’s not clear if the people who sent the letters hoped to influence those races.
There’s no entity called the California Voter Awareness Project registered with the California Secretary of State or in Los Angeles County, and a search of court records for the name turned up empty. Spokespersons for the candidates in Districts 4 and 6 say they had nothing to do with the mailer. So did representatives for United Teachers Los Angeles and California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates.
Some voters have mistakenly blamed two other organizations for the letter: the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, which says it received a handful of angry calls, and the San Diego-based political committee California Voter Project, which said dozens of people contacted them to complain. Callers were urged to file a complaint with the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission.
The L.A. County registrar’s office said it had received about 20 calls about the letter and its attorneys were looking into whether any laws were violated.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla said his office had received complaints. Although state law allows for the use of election data for “election purposes,” Padilla said in a statement, “we believe that better strategies exist, besides public shaming.”
L.A. city ethics rules require that campaign mailers sent by candidates or as independent expenditures clearly disclose who is sending them. But the letter, which does not advocate voting for any particular candidate or measure, might not be interpreted as a “campaign communication.”