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 Ivan Rojas, a 35-year-old security guard, was randomly chosen for
the prize through a lottery set up by the Southwest Voter
Registration Education Project, a group that works to encourage
voter turnout among the Latino community during local elections.
“I was shocked. I still can’t believe it,” Rojas told the Los
Angeles Times about receiving the money for simply voting in a May
Board of Education election.
The contest was designed by the Southwest Voter Registration
Education Project to try and reverse chronically low voter turnout
in local elections, said president Antonio Gonzalez.
In Los Angeles County, just 31 percent of registered voters cast
ballots in the November, 2014 statewide election. Turnout among
Latinos was only 23 percent, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In last year's national midterm elections, turnout reached a 72-year
low, with just 36.4 percent of American voters going to the polls.
Gonzalez said new ways are needed to encourage participation in the
political process.
He touted the success of the lottery, dubbed Voteria, by pointing to
a survey of voters conducted at Loyola Marymount University.
“The initial study says that 25 percent of the people who initially
voted because of Voteria,” Gonzalez said.
Last year, the Los Angeles City Council considered a citywide
lottery system for local elections in an effort to reverse a
downward trend in voter participation.
California and Alaska are the only states with laws that make it
possible to have a voter turnout lottery, but neither state has put
it in practice. Federal law prohibits the rewarding of voters for
casting a ballot in elections for federal office.
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Some critics have come out against the lottery or similar
initiatives.
“In fact, the voteria only underscores the cynical view that people
don't care about their local government anymore and the only way to
get them to vote is to bribe them,” wrote The Los Angeles Times
editorial board in April.
The editorial also raised the question of whether Voteria was
incentivizing certain people to vote for certain candidates.
To that, Gonzalez says that the current voting system already
unfairly favors the desires of certain interest groups.
“We’re here to make sure that disadvantaged people vote, and we make
no apologies," he said.
(Editing by Victoria Cavaliere, Robert Birsel)
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