In 2018, Los Angeles prosecutors charged nine people for running a ballot fraud ring at Skid Row's Midnight Mission.
Eight years later, the Midnight Mission is back in the news for the exact same reason.
What a reporter found inside that shelter is what California calls election security.
Skid Row Voter Fraud at the Midnight Mission Is Nothing New
The Midnight Mission is a Los Angeles Skid Row shelter where homeless residents sleep, eat, and pick up their mail. That last part is why 1,160 voters list it as their address – and why election ballots end up there.
A California Post investigation found hundreds of them sitting completely unsecured in an open hallway – not behind a locked door, not in a mail room, just out in the open.
This is the same shelter where a defendant set up a card table outside in 2018 to run a ballot fraud scheme across two election cycles. Four of the nine charged pleaded no contest and one walked away with a year in county jail.
A California Post reporter visited the shelter and verified what the photo showed.
The Midnight Mission told investigators that ballots are supposed to be kept under lock and key until distributed to recipients.
Their chief communications officer said she had checked the mail center herself and found everything locked up. Then reporters walked in and photographed them in the open.
An earlier investigation found 7,600 voter registrations linked to Los Angeles shelters across the city – some at facilities with no beds. The Midnight Mission is one address on that list.
https://twitter.com/californiapost/status/2065586590647308397
California Refused the DOJ Noncitizen Voter List and the 9th Circuit Backed Them Up
U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli has spent all of 2026 building election fraud cases across California.
In September, his office arrested a Victorville man in yet another Skid Row ballot fraud scheme – pay people to write stolen voters' names onto petition forms, submit the fakes, and let someone higher up the chain pocket the money.
The Trump administration identified more than 20,000 noncitizen voters who had already been mailed live ballots for the November 3 election. DOJ gave California 48 hours to review the list and flag those ballots.
California refused.
"Time is up for California," Essayli said when DOJ filed its lawsuit on October 15.
The 9th Circuit just ruled against the Trump administration's appeal.
Gavin Newsom called the lawsuit "a sad, desperate attempt" to suppress California voters – this from the governor presiding over a state where hundreds of ballots sit unguarded at a shelter with 1,160 registered voters at one address.
The federal government sent the noncitizen voter list on a thumb drive with the password written on a sticky note. Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan said he didn't consider the thumb drive a secure device and declined to open it.
The November 3 election is fast approaching, ballots are already in the mail, and the 9th Circuit just stripped DOJ of its only enforcement tool.
Somewhere in that Skid Row hallway, those ballots are waiting for whoever picks them up first.
California has watched every Midnight Mission fraud prosecution and refused every federal attempt to address it – the voter roll audit, the noncitizen list, the ballot sequestration request.
You don't spend eight years watching the same shelter generate federal fraud cases and then accidentally leave the ballots in an open hallway.
At some point the open door stops being incompetence and starts being the policy.
Sources:
- California Post, "Hundreds of Ballots Found Unsecured at Midnight Mission Homeless Shelter," California Post, October 2026.
- Ward Clark, "7,600 Voter Registrations Linked to LA Homeless Shelters," RedState, June 2026.
- Fox News, "Skid Row Voter Fraud: Prosecutors Say Homeless Offered Cash, Cigarettes in Exchange for Hundreds of Signatures," Fox News, November 2018.
- California Globe, "Victorville Man Nabbed at Gas Station in Skid Row Ballot Fraud Case," California Globe, September 10, 2026.
- California Globe, "'Time is Up for California' – DOJ Sues to Block California Ballot-Counting As State Officials Refuse to Sequester Noncitizen Ballots," California Globe, October 15, 2026.
- Los Angeles County District Attorney, "Four Plead to Voter Fraud Scheme on Skid Row," LADA Press Release, July 29, 2020.
