LA Times reports on voter registration fraud; man arrested in case

Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times ran this article by Times reporters Evan Halper and Michael Rothfeld about an organization hired by the California Republican Party to register voters. The Times investigated a number of the registrations and found several voters who said they were duped into re-registering as Republican or changing their voting status to vote-by-mail.

Excerpt:

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

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It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party -- a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states -- has been accused of using the tactic across the country.

Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties say they are investigating complaints about the company.

The firm, which a Republican Party spokesman said is paid $7 to $12 for each registration it secures, has denied any wrongdoing and says it has never been charged with a crime.

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The Times randomly interviewed 46 of the hundreds of voters whose election records show they were recently re-registered as Republicans by YPM, and 37 of them -- more than 80% -- said that they were misled into making the change or that it was done without their knowledge.

Lydia Laws, a Palm Springs retiree, said she was angry to find recently that her registration had been switched from Democrat to Republican.

Laws said the YPM staffer who instructed her to identify herself on a petition as a Republican assured her that it was a formality, and that her registration would not be changed. Later, a card showed up in the mail saying she had joined the GOP.

The founder of the company, Mark Jacoby, was arrested over the weekend on voter registration fraud charges, but not for the fraud allegations described by the LA Times. According to this press release from the Secretary of State, the charges brought against him are due to the fact that he registered himself to vote in California at an address that authorities say is not current. The Los Angeles Times published this follow-up article about Jacoby's arrest, which included comments from the California Republican Party stating that the charges were "politically motivated."