Bizarre California fiefdom

The sun rises over Vernon Avenue in a town of only about 90 residents. Vernon is primarily an industrial town, with a few city-owned homes and apartment buildings tucked hard in a world of power plants, smoke stacks, warehouses and transmission lines.

With only about 90 residents, most of whom live in city-owned housing and have ties to officials or work for the city, Vernon's municipal leaders are all but untouchable.

By Hector Becerra, Sam Allen and Kim Christensen,
Los Angeles Times
7:14 PM PDT, September 18, 2010

Carl Algee's job as a $25-an-hour security guard at Vernon's municipal power plant came with one big perk — a city-owned apartment at well below market rent.

There was also one catch.

"When I got the apartment, they said I had to register to vote … and they said, 'You'll know who to vote for,'" Algee recalled. "It was a vague statement, but I knew what they meant — the incumbents."

Algee said he got his ballot by mail and decided to go to City Hall to fill it out and turn it in; as he stood at the counter, a city employee hovered nearby, watching him mark his choices.

"I pointed to one of their candidates and looked at her and she nodded, yes, that one," he said. "So I went to the next one and looked at her and she nodded again. That's how it worked."

(More here.)