The Justice Department announced on Monday that it charged a California woman with violating the law by paying people to register to vote.
Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, was charged with one felony count of paying homeless people living in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles, and other individuals, to register. Armstrong, also known as Anika, faces up to five years in prison and has agreed to plead guilty, according to prosecutors.
“False registrations undermine Americans’ faith in elections — even more so when payoffs are involved,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “This Justice Department is committed to ensuring that all U.S. elections are fair and free from illegal meddling — so that all Americans can accept the results with confidence.”
According to her plea agreement, Armstrong periodically worked in a “petition circulation” role for roughly two decades and was paid by individuals and entities to collect voter signatures on official petitions for California state ballots, the DOJ said. Her coordinators only paid for signatures attributable to registered voters, leading Armstrong to “regularly” pay homeless people in Los Angeles to register to vote so they could add their signatures to petitions relating to initiatives, referendums, and recalls.
“Armstrong regularly paid and offered to pay individuals cash, usually in amounts between $2 and $3, to induce them to sign her petitions,” prosecutors said. “Starting no later than 2025, Armstrong began offering payment to individuals not only to sign her petitions, but also to complete a voter registration form.”
On several occasions, Armstrong allowed homeless people to use her own address to register to vote, the DOJ said.
The development comes after conservative media figure James O’Keefe said Sunday that his undercover investigation found petitioners admitted they are paid $7-$10 per signature, sometimes earning $1,000 or more per day, collecting signatures from individuals with minimal knowledge of what they were signing.
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O’Keefe said he and his team posed as homeless individuals on Skid Row, using hidden cameras to capture Armstrong on camera.
“Now, because you haven’t registered, I need to register you so I can get paid too. I’m paying you guys, I need to get paid,” a woman, who appears to be Armstrong, says in the video, handing cash to a homeless person. O’Keefe alleged such illegal petitions were caught on camera at least 28 times.