A federal voter-registration fraud case involving homeless people on Los Angeles’ Skid Row has drawn new attention after videos surfaced of several people claiming they received money to vote for specific candidates.
Case Details
Federal prosecutors charged Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina del Rey, with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote. Armstrong, a longtime petition circulator, paid people, including homeless people on Skid Row, to register to vote and sign ballot petitions.
Armstrong has agreed to plead guilty, according to the Department of Justice. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.
Separate Video Claims
Separate videos have surfaced online, showing people on Skid Row claiming they received small cash payments to vote for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass or Los Angeles City Council Member Nithya Raman. The videos were reported by the New York Post, citing footage obtained by The California Post.
The DOJ said Armstrong worked for approximately 20 years as a “petition circulator,” collecting voter signatures for ballot initiatives, referendums, and recalls. According to her plea agreement, Armstrong drove around Los Angeles to find registered voters to sign official petitions.
Prosecutors said Armstrong solicited petition signatures on Skid Row because the area had a high concentration of people willing to sign petitions in exchange for money. Armstrong regularly paid or offered to pay people $2 to $3 in cash to sign her petitions.
Starting no later than 2025, prosecutors said she also began offering payment to people who were not registered to vote if they completed voter registration forms. Some homeless people did not have an address to use on the forms, prosecutors said.
Concerns About Election Integrity
“False registrations undermine Americans’ faith in elections – even more so when payoffs are involved,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ Civil Rights Division said.
The allegations come as Raman has advanced to a November runoff against Bass in the Los Angeles mayoral race. The race is officially nonpartisan, though both Bass and Raman are Democrats.
Original reporting: The Dallas Express — read the source article.
