A Los Angeles County woman who worked as a long-time signature collector for ballot initiatives has agreed to plead guilty to paying people, including homeless people on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, to register to vote, officials stated Monday.
Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina del Rey, better known as “Anika,” has consented to enter a plea on a future date to one count of paying another person to register to vote, a federal charge punishable by up to five years in prison.
Armstrong will make her first appearance in federal court in Santa Ana on 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 deal, Armstrong worked as a “petition circulator” on and off for nearly two decades. Coordinators paid her to collect voter signatures on formal petitions preparing initiatives, referendums, and recalls for California state ballots. Prosecutors said Armstrong drove throughout the Los Angeles region looking for registered voters to sign the petitions.
After collecting enough signatures, Armstrong returned the petitions to her coordinators, who paid her a fixed fee for each registered voter signature. The amount she was paid differed depending on the ballot proposal. Armstrong worked hard to guarantee that the persons who signed her petitions were registered voters because her coordinators only paid for signatures from registered voters, according to court documents.
Armstrong admits to soliciting signatures in Skid Row. Federal prosecutors said Skid Row was an ideal location for Armstrong to gather signatures due to the high concentration of persons in a limited area willing to sign petitions in exchange for payment.
According to officials, Armstrong often paid between $2 and $3 to get people to sign her petitions.
Prosecutors claimed that some homeless people lacked an address to fill out the applications, so Armstrong occasionally offered her own former Los Angeles address to enter on the registration form. These registration forms register individuals to vote in both California and federal elections.”This is an example of admitted voter fraud, not an allegation or a theory,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said during a news conference in downtown Monday. “We’re going to aggressively prosecute voter fraud.”
A woman is seen delivering cash to a homeless person in a video recorded by conservative media personality James O’Keefe and shared by the “Real America’s Voice” account. In a social media post on Monday, O’Keefe stated that his footage resulted to Armstrong being charged.
According to Essayli, Armstrong’s detention coincided with arguments due Tuesday in the Department of Justice’s appeal of the dismissal of a case over voter registration records.
Last year, the Department of Justice sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, asking that the state hand over the unredacted voter file, which includes registered voters’ full names, residence addresses, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
The DOJ said it had the authority to obtain the data under 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 move to dismiss, ruling that the DOJ’s request for the information violated federal privacy laws. The defense also claimed that the Trump administration intends to use the data to help enforce its immigration policies.
The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena will hear arguments in the DOJ’s appeal of the rejection on Tuesday morning.
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