LA County woman to plead guilty to paying people on Skid Row to register to vote

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- A Los Angeles County woman who worked as a longtime signature collector for ballot initiatives has agreed to plead guilty to paying people, including homeless individuals in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles, to register to vote, officials announced Monday.

Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina del Rey, also known as "Anika," has agreed to enter a plea on a future date to one count of paying another person to register to vote, a federal charge that carries a penalty of up to five years behind bars.

Armstrong will make her initial appearance in federal court in Santa Ana Monday afternoon.

"False registrations undermine Americans' faith in elections -- even more so when payoffs are involved," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department'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, for nearly 20 years, Armstrong periodically worked as a "petition circulator." In that role, she was paid by coordinators to collect voter signatures on official petitions that qualify initiatives, referendums and recalls for California state ballots. Prosecutors said Armstrong drove around the Los Angeles area to find registered voters to sign the petitions.

After gathering enough signatures, Armstrong returned the petitions to her coordinators, who then paid her a set amount for each registered voter's signature. The amount she was paid varied depending on the specific ballot initiative. Because her coordinators only paid for signatures attributable to registered voters, Armstrong endeavored to ensure the people who signed her petitions were registered voters, court papers show.

Armstrong admitted soliciting signatures in Skid Row. Federal prosecutors contend Skid Row was a convenient place for Armstrong to collect signatures because of its high concentration of people in a relatively small area who were willing to sign petitions in exchange for cash.

Armstrong regularly paid amounts between $2 and $3 to induce people to sign her petitions, officials said.

Prosecutors said some homeless people did not have an address to put on the forms, so on occasion, Armstrong provided her own former address in Los Angeles to write on the registration form. Such registration forms simultaneously registered an individual to vote in California elections and in federal elections.

"This is not an allegation, this is not a theory, this is an example of admitted voter fraud," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said at a downtown news conference Monday. "We're going to aggressively prosecute voter fraud."

A video shot by conservative media figure James O'Keefe and reposted by an account called "Real America's Voice" shows a woman handing cash to a homeless person. In a post on social media Monday, O'Keefe said his video led to Armstrong being charged.

Essayli said Armstrong's arrest coincided with arguments expected Tuesday in the DOJ's appeal of the dismissal of a lawsuit over voter registration records.

The DOJ sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber last year, demanding the state hand over the unredacted voter file, which includes registered voters' full names, residential addresses, driver's license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

The DOJ claimed it had the right to access the data under powers granted by the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Help America Vote Act, and the National Voter Registration Act.

In January, a Santa Ana federal judge granted the defendant's motion to dismiss after finding that the DOJ's request for the information violates federal privacy laws. The defense also argued that the Trump administration wants to use the data to help enforce its immigration policy.

Arguments in the DOJ's appeal of the dismissal are scheduled Tuesday morning in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena.