A California woman has admitted to trolling Los Angeles’ Skid Row to find homeless people she could register to vote and get to sign petitions — and paying them a few bucks to get them to cooperate.
Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, was a paid petition circulator, collecting a fee for every name she could get. She made a practice of cruising Los Angeles looking for signatures, and Skid Row was particularly enticing with its large concentration of people.
And she didn’t let their lack of an address or voter registration stop her.
She carried registration forms and would pay them $2 or $3 each after they signed up and signed whatever petition she was circulating that day.
When the person lacked an address, she encouraged them to use one of her own former addresses, Ms. Armstrong admitted. Given California’s mail-in voting, that means multiple active ballots were sent to that address.
Ms. Armstrong admitted to the facts in a signed plea deal. She is slated to plead to one felony count of paying someone to register to vote.
“False registrations undermine Americans’ faith in elections — even more so when payoffs are involved,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Ms. Armstrong had worked as a signature gatherer for 20 years.
Authorities said the coordinators who hired her would only pay her per valid sign-up, which meant the people had to be registered voters in the state. Ms. Armstrong’s actual payment varied by the nature of each petition.
Prosecutors didn’t reveal how many cases she paid for registrations. It takes hundreds of thousands of valid signatures to get a petition on the ballot.
The Washington Times has reached out to the California Secretary of State for comment.
Contact the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.