Shanekka Renee Johnson: My name is Shanekka Renee Johnson. I’m from Los Angeles, California. 39 years old.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: You live in Skid Row.<\/p>\n
Johnson: I live in Skid Row.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: And then did they come down here and try to pay you to vote?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Yes.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: On a ballot?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Yes.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: How much they pay you?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Five dollars.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Oh, they said, “Here, come and vote for these candidates.”<\/p>\n
Johnson: Yes, sir.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: They told you who to vote for. So they told you to vote for Karen Bass or Nithya Raman.<\/p>\n
Johnson: Karen Bass.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Did you vote for Karen Bass for $5?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Yes.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: And they’re doing this for a lot of people?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Yes.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: How often do they come down here?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Probably like three times a week.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Three times a week to get the ballots?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Wow. To vote for Karen Bass?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Karen Bass, or whoever else.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Nithya. Yeah, crazy. How long you been down here for?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Been down here four years.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Four years? You’ve been seeing this happen all the time?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: It’s like a whole business, huh?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Most definitely.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Would you call it fraud?<\/p>\n
Johnson: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah, fraud behavior.<\/p>\n
Johnson: Fraud behavior, yeah.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Taking advantage of the homeless community.<\/p>\n
Johnson: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Yeah, you got votes.<\/p>\n
Johnson: That sounds bad, but you know, at the time I didn’t know that that was what was going on. I was just trying to make five bucks, you know.<\/p>\n
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. Sounds good.<\/p>\n
Johnson: But I didn’t do the fraud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shanekka Renee Johnson: My name is Shanekka Renee Johnson. I’m from Los Angeles, California. 39 years old. Interviewer:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1647,4132,48,52,51,89635,47,50,51488,49,144496,144497,6645],"class_list":["post-354425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-downtown-los-angeles","tag-karen-bass","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lead-stories","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-mayor","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-renee-johnson","tag-shanekka-renee-johnson","tag-skid-row"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}