District 3 Applicants’ Voter Registration Information Released

The City released the voter registration history of the three applicants for the District 3 Council seat.

Lucious Smith, Brandon Lamar and Justin Jones are vying for the seat previously held by John J. Kennedy until Kennedy’s death in July.

In a special meeting on Thursday, the City Council is scheduled to appoint one of the applicants to the seat. The appointee will hold the seat until December when the procedure will be restarted.

The voters will decide who gets the seat in 2024.

According to the information, Jones registered to vote in August about one month after Kennedy died.

The information does not reveal how long candidates lived in the area before registering to vote there.

Jones came under fire last week in a letter claiming that he only recently moved into the district.

“I am bringing this to your attention because not only do I want this process to be fair, but after being a resident in District 3 for over thirty years, and raising a family here, I don’t want anyone representing me who just moved to the district just to run for office,” the letter states. “I don’t believe there is honor or trustworthiness in that.”

According to the City Charter, a candidate must be a resident of the district to run for officer. The charter does not have minimum residency restrictions.

The document was posted online on Wednesday after it was requested by some members of the City Council.

“At the request of at least two Councilmembers, I asked the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters to provide the Voter Registration and Voting History for each of the applicants under consideration for the City Council District 3 vacancy,” City Clerk Mark Jomsky wrote in the document.

“This information [provided in alphabetical order] is now part of the public record for the City Council’s consideration, with this memo to be shared with the applicants, and posted online for the public.”

Lamar registered to vote in the district in Aug. 2021.

According to his voter registration record he previously registered to vote at 254 N. Lake Ave. Apt. 843. The address was later found to be invalid.

According to a Google search the address traces back to a UPS store which contains mailboxes.

The registration was placed in a “fatal pending status” according to the document released on Wednesday.

“Fatal pending” means the voter registration record that been tagged by a county or state as invalid. Fatal pending are ineligible to cast a vote and they do not receive a mailed sample ballot, poll location directions, and their name do not appear in the voter registration book in the precinct on election day.

There are more than 26,000 people with fatal pending status in Los Angeles County.

However, county and state officials mistakenly assign that qualification in some cases.

Smith, a longtime District 3 resident, registered to vote in the district in 1992, and registered to change his party affiliation in 2001.

It’s not known which party he switched to.