Sacramento County election officials are targeting the homeless for voter registration.
On Thursday, the election agency set up tables at Loaves and Fishes, a non-profit that services the homeless. They registered 13 people to vote, and plan to register more next week, according to county elections spokesperson Janna Haynes.
“I would certainly hope that other counties are taking the same steps that we are to make sure that unhoused people have a voice, because there [are] a lot of things at least on our ballot that do affect them personally,” Haynes said. “It would be nice if they had a voice in things that are going to impact their daily lives.”
According to Haynes, there are roughly 9,200 homeless people in Sacramento County, and about 550 of them are registered to vote. She and the voter registration staff want to increase that number.
Donald Miller, a Texas native, said Thursday was the first time he registered to vote.
“I felt like my voice needed to be heard,” said Miller, who is homeless and receiving assistance from Loaves and Fishes.
The effort comes amidst previous cases in California, and elsewhere in the country, where homeless individuals are targeted for bribery before voting, encouraged to illegally register, or otherwise targeted by political activists seeking to bolster their candidate or party’s chances.
It also comes amidst a worsening problem of homelessness and vagrancy in California, one Texas is suffering from as well.
There are roughly 4,000 homeless individuals in Dallas County alone, according to the 2022 Point-in-Time (PIT) count, with about one in seven of them suffering from serious mental illnesses.
As Sacramento County registers the homeless to vote, a Tarrant County Judge candidate allegedly paid a homeless man for votes, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Newly released body camera footage from January 2020 allegedly reveals a voter fraud conspiracy with current Democrat nominee for Tarrant County Judge, Deborah Peoples, at the center.
In 2016, two Fort Worth police officers encountered a homeless man named Charles Jackson, who had roughly $1000 in cash on his person, according to reports. When the officers inquired about how Jackson amassed this kind of money, he indicated it was related to working around the voting process.
More on that story can be read here.
