unfounded homeless – After Los Angeles’ mayoral primary, unsupported social media claims tied homeless voters in Skid Row to Spencer Pratt’s fall from contention. Videos alleging cash-for-votes were quickly challenged by the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk and the Bass
When Los Angeles’ mayoral primary ended last week, Spencer Pratt’s early lead over Councilmember Nithya Raman didn’t hold. As votes continued to be counted, Pratt fell to third place behind Mayor Karen Bass and the councilmember who went on to the runoff.
But the shock didn’t stay inside election math. It spilled onto social media, where conspiracy claims spread that homeless voters on Skid Row were somehow responsible for Pratt’s loss.
At the center of the newest wave were TikTok posts featuring interviews with three people identified as Skid Row residents. In the videos, an interviewer asked what the voters were paid.
“Five dollars,” one woman said.
The claim that followed—that Pratt’s defeat was tied to people being paid to vote for Bass—was quickly met with pushback from election officials and campaign staff. The L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk responded on X to the videos. saying there was no evidence that the woman voted for Bass for $5 and that the woman is registered to vote in Inglewood. a separate city adjacent to Los Angeles.
Alex Stack. a Bass campaign spokesman. said in a statement that the idea that Bass’ campaign paid for votes is “absurd.” He added: “It’s the same type of false election misinformation and disinformation put out by Trump after he lost the presidency.” Stack said the Bass campaign agreed with the L.A. County Registrar that the issue is false.
On Wednesday, Times reporters went to the area where those TikTok videos were filmed but did not find the three individuals.
Election experts urged caution about the size of any alleged wrongdoing, even if individual cases were true. Christopher R. Hallenbrook. associate professor of political science at Cal State Dominguez Hills. said a one-off case like “a vote here or there that might have been a little fishy in Skid Row” would not be enough to flip an outcome in an election with “over 750. 000 people voting.”.
Rick Hasen. a professor of law and the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA. said such instances should be investigated—particularly because of the political pressure that often follows voter-fraud claims—but he called the notion of a mass payoff scheme outlandish. “If you were going to pay people $3 or $5 to vote. and you had to pay tens of thousands of them … it would be a pretty expensive and risky way to try to sway an election. ” he said. later adding: “You’re just talking about a ridiculous. vast conspiracy.”.
The story people told online has leaned heavily on the idea that homeless voters were targeted. But when The Times went to Skid Row on Wednesday and spoke with 20 residents, the accounts didn’t line up with the viral narrative.
Some residents said they live on the streets, others in shelters or apartments in the area. None said anyone approached them offering money to vote for a specific candidate. Most said they didn’t vote and had not been approached in any manner about the election.
One woman who identified herself only as Kimberly said she was shocked by what had been circulating online. “They’re not going to approach nobody like me, because I’ll be looking at them like they’re crazy,” she said. “I would not vote for anybody if they’re offering money, hell no.”
Michele Brewster. sitting in a wheelchair on San Julian Street. said she did not see candidates—or anyone at all—campaigning on Skid Row or talking to homeless people about the election. “much less pay them to vote.” She said that if people had tried. she would have heard. “I virtually think that the voting process completely passed up Skid Row,” Brewster said. Brewster also said she didn’t vote in the recent mayoral election.
Still, a smaller thread of claims has helped fuel the wider conspiracy. A handful of people interviewed by The Times said they had seen workers gathering signatures for ballot petitions and offering cash to persuade homeless people to sign. Some said the workers also registered people to vote, which is a requirement to sign a ballot petition.
Three people told The Times they accepted a couple dollars to sign. One person said he signed multiple signatures using various names and received $10. That allegation has been pointed to by some as evidence that voter fraud occurred last week.
In May, the U.S. Justice Department announced a case from Marina del Rey involving a woman who admitted in a plea agreement that she illegally paid people on Skid Row to register to vote so they could sign ballot petitions. The plea agreement said she was paid based on the number of voter signatures she collected.
The filing described how, in some cases where homeless individuals didn’t have an address, she provided her former address in Los Angeles. Because California sends mail-in ballots to voters with an address, the plea agreement said ballots could have been sent to where the voters didn’t live.
The L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk said voter registration records are checked against U.S. Postal Service records. Mismatches render a voter inactive and unable to vote until they provide adequate information. It said that if a mail-in ballot can’t be delivered to an address on the voter’s file. or if it is sent to an address where the voter doesn’t live and is returned. the voter is marked inactive.
The election office also said all mail-in ballots received undergo signature verification to ensure the ballot was filled out by the voter whose ballot it is.
California law allows mail-in ballots to arrive within seven days after election day and be counted. but generally they must be postmarked by election day. In responses to social media claims, the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk said on X that if there is no postmark. but a voter dated their ballot on or prior to election day. a ballot can still be counted—adding that “the number of ballots without postmarks are very low.”.
The viral narrative has also picked up other disputed claims. including a widely shared video from conservative media personality Benny Johnson. Johnson claimed Los Angeles used the “homeless industrial complex” to rig the election against Pratt and. without evidence. described a supposed scheme to withhold ballots meant for homeless people and wait until the chosen candidate needed only the final number of votes.
Johnson also falsely said Raman was “winning Skid Row” by showing a precinct-level map of results in and around downtown Los Angeles. The precinct-level map showed Bass, not Raman, as having the most votes across precincts covering Skid Row. Bass was up in other areas of downtown. and Raman was up in other parts of the city and nearby neighborhoods. including Echo Park. home to many young renters who are described as forming a core of Raman’s base.
Johnson’s map, however, used preliminary data. The June 8 post only included votes counted through the afternoon following election day. Since then. more votes were counted and Bass still had the most votes across Skid Row. though the results were still preliminary. Johnson did not respond to requests for comment sent to email addresses associated with him and his show.
Another thread emerged when Pratt on X suggested that the gap between him and Raman was closed through votes of homeless Angelenos.
The California Post reported that First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said he would launch an investigation based on a report that thousands of people were registered to vote at homeless shelters. including at sites that had more registered voters than beds. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.
In the California Post’s report, the Midnight Mission on Skid Row had 1,160 people registered at its address while the shelter’s website said it had only 120 beds.
Georgia Hawley. chief communications officer for the mission. said the mission actually has 296 beds and that about 125 more people sleep in its dining room or courtyard—and that the people sleeping there aren’t always the same. Hawley said services are not restricted to people sleeping on site. Those living on the street. she said. can use the mission to send and receive mail. take a shower. use the restroom and get food. with anywhere from 500 to 1. 000 people showing up for each meal.
Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the county recorder’s office, cautioned against comparing shelter beds with voter registration records. “Voter registration records do not indicate whether an individual is currently residing at or receiving services from a facility. ” he said in an email. If living on the streets, homeless voters can use a P.O. Box or a service provider’s address to receive mail-in ballots. and if they can’t provide an address to receive mail. they can vote in person.
Hasen said the public shouldn’t treat voter registration by people who are unhoused as suspicious by default. “People who are unhoused have the right to vote, just like everyone else,” he said. “To the extent that you see outreach trying to register unhoused people to vote. I think that’s a good thing. not a bad thing.”.
Across Skid Row, what residents described on Wednesday—no one handing out cash for votes in the mayoral race, no candidates moving through the area, no pattern that matched the viral videos—collided with an online story that was growing faster than election timelines.
Whether any wrongdoing exists at all is a separate question from whether it could have changed the outcome. Even experts who said allegations should be investigated were clear about scale: tens of thousands of paid votes would be both costly and risky.
For now, the election is moving forward with Bass advancing to the runoff, Raman joining her, and Pratt left behind—while the claims about homeless voting continue to churn, shaped less by proof than by the gaps people want to fill with something easier to believe.
Los Angeles mayoral primary Spencer Pratt Karen Bass Nithya Raman Skid Row voter fraud claims L.A. County Registrar-Recorder homeless voters TikTok misinformation mail-in ballots Midnight Mission