One political network · Issue
The voting-age proposal lost by 16 votes in 2022. It is back on Culver City's November 3, 2026 ballot — with the Meighan-Thiel name again appearing in the campaign's team.
2022 → 2026
Amy Thiel and Patrick Meighan are documented spouses. Ada Meighan-Thiel appears in Vote16's 2022 organization and student-leadership records. In Vote16's 2026 team post, Arlo Meighan-Thiel appears on the team as Ada is described as being away at college.
CCUSD identifies Amy Thiel as a school nurse. Reviewed 2022 Vote16 transaction records show $2,463.91 in unique monetary and nonmonetary support from Thiel after duplicate Form 497 notices are excluded, the largest individual total identified in the reviewed Vote16 records.
Open Amy Thiel's record →Public reporting identifies Patrick Meighan and Amy Thiel as spouses. Campaign records report a $250 contribution from Meighan to Vote16 Culver City.
Open Patrick Meighan's record →Meighan-Thiel
Ada Meighan-Thiel was a Vote16 principal officer and co-president in 2022. a public Vote16 post now identifies Arlo Meighan-Thiel with the 2026 team and describes Ada as away at college.
Open family record →Current team
Vote16's 2026 Instagram carousel identifies Arlo Meighan-Thiel as part of the current Vote16 effort and describes Ada Meighan-Thiel as away at college. That adds a 2026 chapter to Ada's documented 2022 Vote16 leadership record.
2022 → 2026
Measure VY proposed allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in Culver City and CCUSD Board elections. It failed in 2022 by 8,309 votes to 8,293. On June 22, 2026, Freddy Puza, Bryan Fish and Yasmine-Imani McMorrin voted to place a new Vote16 charter amendment on the November 2026 ballot; Albert Vera and Dan O'Brien voted no.
Committee formation
The initial Statement of Organization, executed July 4, 2022 and received by the City July 5, names Michelle Zhou as treasurer and Ada Meighan-Thiel as a principal officer. Culver City High School reporting later identified Ada as a Vote16 co-president.
National organization
Generation Citizen founded Vote16USA in 2015. Los Angeles Times reporting on the 2022 Culver City campaign said Generation Citizen provided the local effort with technology, communications and campaign-strategy assistance. Culver City campaign-finance records also identify Generation Citizen as a contributor; reviewed records total $2,050 in support.
Follow the money upstream
The records below describe funding to Generation Citizen itself. They do not establish that these institutional grants were earmarked for Culver City's Vote16 campaign. The local $2,050 contribution is kept separate from the national organization's broader funding.
Yield Giving · 2024
Yield Giving's public gifts database lists a $2 million 2024 gift to Generation Citizen. Generation Citizen's 2024 annual report describes the Yield Giving gift as part of new funding for organizational capacity.
Open Yield Giving record ↗New Profit · 2024
New Profit announced an unrestricted $1.5 million Build investment in Generation Citizen over four years, paired with strategic advisory support. New Profit's 2024 Form 990 reports a $375,000 cash grant to Generation Citizen for program expansion — consistent with one year of the four-year relationship.
Open New Profit announcement ↗Ford Foundation · 2019
Generation Citizen's 2019 Schedule B names the Ford Foundation and reports $368,000 in contributions for that tax year. The donor disclosure is unusually direct evidence because it appears on Generation Citizen's own filed return.
Generation Citizen financials ↗New Profit crossover
New Profit describes Wendy Lee Haines as its Deal Partner for Generation Citizen and says she serves on Generation Citizen's Board of Directors. New Profit also identifies Generation Citizen as a member of its America Forward Coalition and says the organizations have co-hosted democracy and youth-civic-engagement work.
Earlier disclosed donors
Generation Citizen's 2018 and 2019 returns disclose several large contributors by name. These are organization-level contributions, not evidence of funding specifically directed to Culver City.
2018
Generation Citizen's 2018 Schedule B lists the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation at $785,000.
2018
The same Schedule B lists the Bezos Family Foundation at $500,000.
2019
The 2019 Schedule B again lists the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, this time at $475,000, alongside Ford at $368,000.
CCUSD connection
CCUSD's Health Services page identifies Amy Thiel as a school nurse who began working for the district in 2016. Vote16 would expand the local electorate to eligible 16- and 17-year-old Culver City residents, including qualifying CCUSD students.
Political network
The 2022 endorsement list included Yasmine-Imani McMorrin, Daniel Lee, Alex Fisch, Paula Amezola, Steven M. Levin, Isaac Bryan, the Culver City Democratic Club and the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. In 2026, Puza, Fish and McMorrin supplied the three council votes that returned Vote16 to the ballot.
Research network
Laura Wray-Lake is a UCLA Luskin professor of Social Welfare and a Vote16 Research Network member. She is listed as a panelist for the Sept. 18, 2026 Vote16 Culver City town hall. Her documented research portfolio includes the Haynes Foundation project Is Los Angeles Ready to Lower the Voting Age? and broader externally funded studies of youth civic engagement.
Lower-voting-age research
The 2019–2020 faculty fellowship project examined public readiness, municipal feasibility and political appetite for lowering the voting age to 16 or 17 in the Los Angeles area.
External research portfolio
The documented UCLA portfolio includes support from AmeriCorps, the Haynes Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. The total uses UCLA's $272,375 NSF site allocation rather than the full $669,142 collaborative award.
Research funding is not campaign funding. These grants are presented as Wray-Lake's research support; the records do not establish that they financed Vote16 advocacy or the Culver City ballot campaign.
August 2026 · Robert Frost Auditorium
CCUSD correspondence and public-records responses document a proposed Vote16 / Measure VY event at Robert Frost Auditorium. Read together, the records establish when the District was questioned about the event, when Superintendent Alfonso Jiménez says the facility request reached him, when he denied it, and what CCUSD later said about responsive records.
Before Aug. 23
Vote16 event material identified Robert Frost Auditorium for a proposed town hall featuring Bryan Fish, Laura Wray-Lake, a Culver City High School Vote16 student leader and LaJuan Allen, Vote16's national director.
Aug. 23 · Sept. 18 reference
Correspondence asked CCUSD for paperwork showing booking details for a Frost event identified as September 18, stated that the event appeared political, and asked how District policies applied. A follow-up later that day directed CCUSD to the current District policy.
Aug. 23–24 · Sept. 22 reference
An August 23 request whose subject identified September 22 sought the price paid, renter identity and registration category. On August 24, a formal CPRA request identified a Frost rental on September 22 from 6:30–8:00 p.m. and sought the organization's legal name, classification, rental agreement and payment records.
Aug. 24 · 11:33 a.m.
The CPRA request was expanded to seek communications CCUSD had with the sponsoring entity, other District staff, School Board members, listed speakers or others regarding the event request.
Aug. 25
Jiménez later stated that the administrator overseeing Frost Auditorium requests brought him a request on August 25. He said he denied it because the event did not satisfy Board Policy 1160's requirement that a forum be available to all sides of the issue on an equitable basis, and that the group was notified that day.
Aug. 28
CCUSD's response to the August 24 CPRA request stated that, subject to the CPRA standards and exemptions described in its response, the District did not possess disclosable records responsive to the request. Later that day Jiménez supplied the August 25 referral-and-denial chronology.
The unresolved documentary question
The records currently available establish that CCUSD was being asked about an already-promoted Frost political event by August 23. The August 24 CPRA expressly sought rental documents and communications about the event. Jiménez subsequently stated that the Frost administrator brought the request to him on August 25, when he denied it. CCUSD then reported no disclosable responsive records to the August 24 request.
The records presently available do not document the steps by which the proposed event reached public promotion before the August 25 request described by Jiménez. They also do not establish whether any earlier arrangements occurred through written communications, oral communications, a facility-reservation system, or another process.
September dates appearing in the record: September 18 appears in the August 23 correspondence concerning the advertised Frost event; September 22 appears in the August 24 CPRA concerning a Frost rental from 6:30–8:00 p.m.
School-campus rule
The policy bars distribution of candidate or ballot-measure campaign material on district property except at balanced forums or qualifying Civic Center Act events.
Primary records
Campaign filings, election results, Vote16's public team materials, City Council records, CCUSD staff records and institutional funding records are linked directly.
Endorsement record
The campaign's current endorsements page lists nine local or regional endorsers for the 2022 measure. This project preserves those relationships as endorsements only; endorsement does not establish funding, campaign control or agreement on unrelated issues.
Political organizations
Los Angeles County Democratic Party
Culver City Democratic Club
Culver City officials
Yasmine-Imani McMorrin
Paula Amezola
Daniel Lee
Alex Fisch
Steven M. Levin
State + research
Isaac Bryan
Laura Wray-Lake
Web archive
An archived Nov. 28, 2020 snapshot preserves the campaign's earlier vote16culvercity.org web identity. The campaign now publishes at vote16cc.org. The old and current URLs are retained together here as successive public web records of Vote16 Culver City.
Research-network trail
The public record now exposes individual bridges rather than leaving the national research connection as a single organization label.
Culver City youth advocate → local leadership → 2023 Vote16Global delegation.
UMD / Research Network → 2022 workshop centered on Vote16 Culver City.
UMD → Vote16Global delegation with Rottenberg.
Research Network → 2019 Mayors Innovation Project roster with Thomas Small.
Local → national
Vote16USA's own records connect Culver City to its national youth advisory structure through Ruby Brandenburg, place Culver City in Vote16USA's organizational timeline, and connect Vote16USA to Generation Citizen, Goodnation Foundation, UCLA Luskin, the Vote16 Research Network and University of Maryland research infrastructure.
Personnel bridge
Vote16USA National Youth Advisory Board · Director of Vote16CC.
Open person record →National advocacy
Generation Citizen-founded organization; current pages identify Goodnation Foundation as fiscal sponsor.
Open organization record →Research network
UMD-convened research network that identifies Vote16USA as a partner.
Open network record →International network
Collaboration among the Research Network, Vote16 Canada and UMD's Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement.
Open global record →Convening + advisory
Host partner for Vote16USA's 2025 National Convening; Laura Wray-Lake serves on Vote16USA's National Advisory Board.
Open UCLA record →Research infrastructure
Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement appears across the Research Network, Vote16Global and Vote16USA advisory structure.
Open UMD record →