County Ordered to Register More Minority Voters

Ruling that a “substantial and identifiable class” of poor and minority residents are underrepresented on the voting rolls, a Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered Los Angeles County to launch a wide-ranging new program to register them.

In a decision that clearly supported civil rights groups’ claims that low-income, nonwhite residents often fail to vote because they aren’t sure how to register, Judge Jack M. Newman ordered the county to begin immediately soliciting registrations in health clinics, welfare offices and other agencies with frequent public contact.

A lawsuit brought by a number of public interest groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Common Cause of California and Human SERVE, a national voter registration organization, accused the county of failing to comply with state laws that require government officials to actively identify and register all eligible voters--not just those that seek to register on their own. The ACLU described the case as the first of its kind in the nation.

The result, the plaintiffs said, has been a disproportionately low representation of minorities and the poor at election time.

On the Palos Verdes Peninsula, for example, where the median family income is more than $50,700 a year, voter registration is at 93.2%, compared to 31.9% in Bell, where family income is just above $15,400.

Similar statistics hold true across racial boundaries, according to a number of studies submitted to the court.

In Hidden Hills, La Canada and La Habra Heights, where whites make up more than 92% of the population, at least 85% are registered to vote. But in communities like Cudahy and Maywood, where whites make up only about 30% of the population, voter registration rates hover at less than 26%.

Overall, more than 31% of those eligible to vote in Los Angeles County--an estimated 1.5 million people--cannot do so because they are not registered, attorneys argued.

“Our democracy is based on people choosing their representatives, and when you have an electorate that’s so skewed, when one-third of the people who are eligible to participate in that process are not participating, then I think that’s a threat to a democratic society,” said Barbara Facher of Human SERVE.

Under Newman’s order, as many as 20,000 employees who have frequent contact with target groups would have to receive some training in registration procedures, said Deputy County Counsel Philip Hickok, who said he will consult with Registrar of Voters Charles Weissburd and the county Board of Supervisors before deciding whether to appeal the order.

But ACLU attorneys said the order means simply that county employees will have to ask clients whether they are registered to vote. If they are not, they will inquire whether they would like to register, and if the answer is yes, they will give them a postcard to fill out and mail in.

The large number of low-income and minority residents not registered to vote represents an “extreme disparity,” added ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum. “Is the government going to contend that this is not effective disenfranchisement, a two-tiered system? . . . This county is frankly running shells of elections.”

The county argues it has done nothing to prevent those citizens from registering to vote. An extensive voter outreach program has brought in 250,000 new voters in the last few years through mobile registration vans, a telephone service for registration inquiries and mail-in registration forms available at more than 3,500 locations, Hickok said.

But state law requires counties to do more than that, Rosenbaum countered. It requires counties to deputize county employees as registrars when necessary to register citizens from groups that are underrepresented.

Program Works in 2 Counties

Similar programs have been adopted on a voluntary basis in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and the contact with potential voters takes only about a minute and a half, said plaintiffs’ attorney Dennis M. Perluss. More than 900 new voters have been registered in Alameda County in the first three weeks of the program, he added.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in December voted 3 to 2 to table a proposal by Supervisor Ed Edelman to adopt a similar voluntary program, a defeat ACLU attorneys said at the time was engineered by conservative members of the board to protect their political bases.

“My experience is that often incumbents of both major parties are sometimes reluctant to take steps to expand the electorate because I think they are reluctant to threaten their existing positions,” Facher said Thursday. “I would hope that the issues that have been raised would work to convince politicians that their responsibility as elected officials is to make sure that we have as broad an electorate as possible.”

But Supervisor Michael Antonovich, predicting that the board will appeal the decision, said the county is already doing a good job of registering voters. “In my opinion, adding to the workload in social services is counterproductive. It will cost $2 million and it will reduce services to the needy,” he said.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn said he has always supported the need to expand registration. “Our nation was founded on the principle of democracy, and the more people who participate in elections, be they Democrats, Republicans or independents, the better,” he said.

The county has the option of appealing the preliminary injunction issued Thursday or requesting a trial on the issues.