(April 2, 2009) -- Following-up on a story separately reported by LBReport.com, 1st dist. City Council candidate Misi Tagaloa says his political campaign and his Second Samoan Congregational Church have registered nearly 1,000 homeless persons to vote in keeping with its stated theme of giving "voice to the voiceless" -- and says no fraud was involved.

Rev. Tagaloa responded to an inquiry from LBReport.com after city officials announced earlier today (April 2) -- without making allegations of wrongdoing against any specific individual, entity or campaign -- that they were implementing what they called precautionary procedures requiring provisional balloting for some registered voters after a recent "surge" of 290 voter registration forms listed six non-residential addresses as voters' residences.

One of the six addresses listed as the voters' residence on 80 voter registration forms was the location of Rev. Tagaloa's Second Samoan Congregational Church.

Asked if he could shed any light on this, Rev. Tagaloa told LBReport.com:

Rev. Tagaloa: One of the themes in our campaign...is a voice for the voiceless, so I suspect 90% of those people that sed those six locations as mailing addresses are the homeless population.

...I haven't looked at these affidavits personally, but you have two chances of entering an address on that affidavit. You can either enter it at the residence part of that affidavit or you can enter it as a mailing address. So sometimes they're confused and they transpose the two, and they put both the mailing address and the residence address but I'll bet you anything 99% of those affidavits belong to homeless people...

...[T]he City Attorney advises me that the addresses listed, including the one for the church, were listed under their [residence] address, not their mailing address...Do you know anything about that?

A: So that may be a clerical mistake. Maybe they put that in there inadvertantly, but we don't have people living at the church. They do come to the church on a daily basis to have a meal or just get out of the elements, but we don't normally house people at the church.

...The other question that came up...is they're thinking we did maybe something fraudulent. Well there's no question that there is no fraud going on. These are people that are here. We didn't bus any people from Cudahy or Compton so they can register here. No, these are people off the street. We're catching them at the grocery stores and the community anchors and any place where they gather.

Q: Well how do we know they live in the 1st district?

A: Well most of them are homeless.

Q: Then they could live anywhere.

A: Yeah, they could live anywhere.

Q: But if they don't live in the 1st district they can't vote in the 1st district, can they?

A: ...So we need to test that, right? So you get a guy named [cites a name]...and you ask where he lives and he would say that he lives at the church.

Q: But he doesn't live there...[H]e can't because you said nobody lives at the church.

A: Nobody lives there but that's where he calls home. Now he's physically in the area and has been in the area for the last four years. So this is where he calls home. He lives in the 1st district...I know the affidavits were signed at the 1st district. I know that 'cause we strategically did not want to go out and register people that don't live in the district...But there's no fraud involved at all. We didn't bus people in...

Rev. Tagaloa said almost a thousand new people had been registered to vote since his campaign started using the church, Tafesilafa'i [501(c)(3) entity described on its website as "an effort by the Samoan faith community to identify meaning in their lives" using Samoan heritage, culture, customs, etc.] as well as an individual paid by the campaign.

"That's voter outreach. That's part of our campaign, trying to get people to participate in the electoral process in addition to having the registered voters getting excited about selecting their leader," Rev. Tagaloa said.

The publicly filed campaign finance report for the Tagaloa campaign (activities 2/22-3/21) indicates a payment of $1,660 to an individual for Voter Registration. Rev. Tagaloa says the individual was not related to the church or Tafesilafa'i.