Overview
- Federal prosecutors on Monday charged Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote and said she is set to enter a guilty plea in the coming weeks after an initial court appearance in Santa Ana.
- Prosecutors say Armstrong worked Skid Row, offering $2 to $3 and small items like cigarettes or phone cards for signatures on petitions and, starting in 2025, for completed voter-registration forms.
- Court filings state she sometimes wrote her former Los Angeles address on registration forms for people without housing, which could have sent their vote-by-mail ballots there because California automatically mails ballots to all registered voters.
- According to the plea agreement, Armstrong spent about two decades as a paid petition circulator who earned per valid signature, a pay structure that rewarded signatures from registered voters and, prosecutors say, drove her to seek new registrations.
- The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office investigated after a James O’Keefe video showed cash changing hands on Skid Row, and the Justice Department says the felony carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.