Skid Row homeless claim they’ve been paid to vote for Karen Bass and Nithya Raman
A series of shocking videos show homeless residents on Los Angeles’ Skid Row claiming they were paid to vote for Mayor Karen Bass and councilwoman Nithya Raman.
The California Post obtained copies of the videos after they were published Tuesday on the TikTok account LaneNeedsSpencerPratt.
The footage, recorded near 7th Street and Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday morning, has since been provided to the Department of Justice. It also follows The Post’s revelations that thousands of homeless voters were registered to shelters where they didn’t live.
One shelter in Venice, where 185 Raman voters were registered, received $600,000 from taxpayers care of the socialist Raman.
In one of the clips, a man who calls himself Kevin Shepherd, claimed he received $4 to vote for Bass.
When asked whether he would also have been paid to vote for Raman, Shepherd answered ”yes” and said Spencer Pratt was not among the candidates he was encouraged to support.
“They gave you an optional choice,” Shepherd claimed, alleging the was offered $2 but negotiated for a higher payment and ultimately received $4.
Shepherd further claimed he completed a mail-in ballot for Bass and deposited it in a ballot box.
Skid Row resident, Rene Johnson, 39, also claimed she received $5 after being told to vote for Bass.
Johnson said she supported Bass, but told the creator she was still unclear about some of the forms she had completed.
“But, you know, at the time, I didn’t know that that was going on,” she said.
“I was just trying to make five bucks, you know? But I didn’t do the fraud.”
When asked if she thought it was fraud, she said she thought that it was “fraudulent behavior.”
She also said she thought people were being taken advantage of.
Another woman, who said she was living on the street, also claimed she accepted money to vote for Mayor Bass.
“It was like two bucks,” the unidentified woman said, adding that “yeah they come out here all the time.”
The content creator behind the videos said he visited the area after being alerted by a friend who works nearby and claimed to have seen political volunteers operating in the neighborhood in the lead-up to the election.
“Everybody said it was normal,” the content creator told The Post.
“They said people came through all the time.”
The creator said he spent about two hours speaking with residents, many of whom claimed voter-registration and outreach efforts were a routine part of life on Skid Row before Election Day.
Several residents alleged that groups regularly visited the area asking people to sign paperwork, though some acknowledged they did not fully understand what they were signing.
According to multiple residents interviewed on camera, outreach workers allegedly visited the area as often as three to five times a week before the election, with several organizations purportedly involved.
A fourth resident, identified as Mark Sanchez, claimed he had been approached repeatedly by political canvassers.
“To sign a petition for the mayor or different things in office and they paid me $4 or $5 in different accounts,” Sanchez claimed.
Sanchez further alleged the payments occurred multiple times.
“It happened more than four or five times,” he claimed.
The videos surfaced one day after former reality television star Spencer Pratt was eliminated from the Los Angeles mayoral race as Raman surged into contention for a runoff spot.
The California Post was unable to independently verify the claims made in the videos.
However, The Post visited several locations with large concentrations of registered voters on Monday and Tuesday and spoke with nearly 20 individuals about voting and voter registration.
Many said they knew they were registered to vote but could not recall who registered them, whether they had recently voted or what happened to their ballots after registration.
Don Garza, a disabled military veteran who has lived on Skid Row since 1999, said voter registration is common in Skid Row and that nonprofit organizations regularly conduct voter registration drives throughout the area.
“We are tired of it. We don’t want people coming in and deciding elections and taking advantage of us,” Garza said.
“Every one of them thinks they have claim to our voice. They think they speak for us.”
A Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America openly promotes a guide instructing volunteers on how to encourage voters to cast ballots on the spot and hand them over for delivery.
The practice, commonly known as ballot harvesting, is legal in California but remains highly controversial. The guide, titled “How To: Ballot Delivery,” was published by the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in May 2022 and remains available online.
The instructions provide a step-by-step process for collecting completed mail ballots and urge volunteers to repeatedly press voters to submit them immediately. “Will you vote now?” the guide tells volunteers to ask, before adding: “Ask at least 3 times.”
The California Post reached out to Bass and Raman campaign for further comment but did not hear back.
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