ORANGE COUNTY LEGISLATIVE WATCH AAOC’s Voter Registration Initiative: Why It Matters to the Multifamily Industry

Since the start of 2023 AAOC has been reaching out membership wide and requesting that you communicate with your residents about voter registration. Our ask has been quite simple and consistent:

• Provide new residents with information about updating their voter registration.

• Encourage existing residents to make sure their voter registration is current.

• Remind residents who are moving out to make sure the change their registration to their new address.

This is a major initiative for AAOC moving forward. Having current, upto-date voter rolls is essential to a representative democracy, which is the core of our reasoning behind this effort, but there are many other considerations behind this effort. We want you to better understand the purpose and reasoning for this initiative so that you can be part of its implementation.

Changing Profile of California Voters

Some of you will remember the mantra that James Carville repeated throughout the Clinton Administration— “Demographics are Destiny.” The quote predates the Clinton Administration by over 150 years, originally quipped by French philosopher Auguste Comte. Despite its age, the quote has repeatedly proven to be an accurate predicter of election outcomes.

California’s demographics are changing dramatically, and not just from an ethnic, religious, or political standpoint. It’s also changing in the fact that California will soon be a majority renter state. As a result, our industry is faced with a compelling reason to change its approaches on how we advocate on policy and how and with whom we communicate. We are missing an opportunity to communicate with renters on policies that regulate the multifamily industry, which also affect them and are not truly in their best interests to support.

However, to be trusted and believed by renters, we need to begin with communication now that is not associated with a direct ask or connected to a pending election. We need to establish relationships now so that we can earn their trust when it comes to policies moving forward.

Current Voter Rolls

If you ever look at voter rolls, many times they reflect very outdated information about addresses—with multiple people/families/surnames registered at the same (unit) address, including people who may or may not be current residents. If we want to have an accurate voter turnout, we need to ensure that the people who are registered to vote at a specific address are the current and actual residents.

This protects the voters’ ballot immensely. It ensures that the ballot they return is for the candidates and issues that affect them and the community where they currently reside. Voting while still registered at a previous address means their votes are being lost when it comes to ensuring that they benefit from accurate representation and their vote has an impact on the issues for which they have a community—or neighborhood-specific interest.

Along these same lines, when ballots are cast by prior residents of your rental property, they are having an influence on the outcome of elections (issues and candidates) that directly impact your property and the residents who currently reside there. Having ballots cast that affect your property by individuals who no longer live there disenfranchises voters who current reside in your rental community and diminishes the local understanding that goes into local elections.

Correcting Appearances

Elections are an imprecise science— with the ability for anomalies to exist in voting patterns. However, when these anomalies exist, they raise doubts and concerns about the integrity of the election. Those appearances tear away at our democracy, and we must ensure that we support a process seen as fair and free elections.

candidates was anywhere from near 50/50 splits to around a 70/30 split. These same precincts had 80/20 & 90/10+ splits for candidates.

• Those same precincts had high concentration of rental communities

• There were plenty of other highrental community precincts where this same turn out & split did not occur.

We want to make sure that apartment owners and operators are not unfairly blamed if someone investigates these Watch — continued on page 16

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• Main Line Snaking...................... $89.50 (from 3- or 4-inch ground level access)

• Slab Leak Repair..................... $825.00 (locate, excavate, repair backfill & patch concrete) (direct access copper plumbing)

• Backflow Test................... CALL FOR PRICING (discount available for multiple devices)

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Following the 2022 elections, we examined several precincts and found several challenging anomalies. We found precincts where:

• The average turnout was 30–40%. We found several precincts where the turnout was above 80%.

• The average spreads on support for