Voter Registration Charges Filed Against ‘Bounty Hunter’ in Valley

A man was charged Friday with four felony counts of illegally registering noncitizens from the northeast San Fernando Valley to vote in last spring’s primary election.

Officials from the secretary of state’s office described Jaime Campa, 21, as an independent “bounty hunter,” so called because he signed up voters for the dollar “bounty” he was paid for each signature.

Campa was not affiliated with Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, an Orange County Latino rights group that is at the center of investigations into voter fraud allegations, said Undersecretary of State Robert Lapsley.

The secretary of state’s office has 500 open investigations into voter registration fraud and has sent 140 of them to local prosecutors, Lapsley said.

“Bounty hunters make up a huge part of the problems we’re seeing,” Lapsley said. “In a lot of cases, the abuses are egregious.”

Campa, who is in custody on an unrelated probation violation charge, is set to be arraigned Monday in Los Angeles Municipal Court.

If convicted on all four counts, Campa could receive a maximum five-year state prison sentence.

The investigation was conducted by the secretary of state and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Suspicions of misconduct surfaced last year in the Valley’s 39th Assembly District where a contentious four-way primary race was underway to replace Assemblyman Richard Katz.

Two of the candidates, including Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar), were vying to become the first Latino legislator elected from the Valley.

A political consultant noticed that an unusually high number of new voters had registered in the 39th District and started spot-checking the validity of the signatures.

After consulting with County Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack, the consultant, Larry Levine, found that a large portion of the registration affidavits were checked out to one man, Steve Martinez.

The prosecutor who filed the charges said Campa worked for Martinez, described by the district attorney as a “Los Angeles political activist.” No other information about Martinez was available.

Campa was paid an hourly wage in addition to the $1 per voter bounty, or a total of $300 to $400, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Randal Baron in a written release.

Most of the signatures gathered were in the 39th Assembly District, but none of the four illegally registered voters cast ballots in the primary election, Baron said.

Levine said he never associated the illegal registrations with any of the campaigns, which did not have significant voter registration drives themselves.

“This is clearly a bounty hunter rip-off,” Levine said.

Cardenas said there was a significant effort by the Southwest Voting Project and others to raise Democratic registration in his and other districts last year.

The Cardenas campaign registered about 200 voters as campaign workers walked door to door for their candidate.

Cardenas, who won the primary by more than 3,000 votes, said he supported the prosecution.