The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Monday that a 64-year-old California woman faces serious charges for allegedly paying homeless individuals in impoverished neighborhoods to engage in voter registration, in a case involving voter registration fraud.
According to the DOJ, Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong (alias “Anika”) has been involved in collecting signatures for ballot proposals for a long time. She has agreed to plead guilty to charges of “paying others to induce them to register as voters.” Under federal law, the maximum statutory penalty for this charge is five years of federal imprisonment.
In her signed plea agreement, Armstrong admitted to not only paying individuals (in cash, cigarettes, and phone cards) but also instructing homeless individuals to fill out voter registration forms with false addresses. She is expected to complete the plea process officially in the coming weeks.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon stated, “False voter registration actions undermine the American public’s confidence in elections—especially when money is involved.”
With the upcoming midterm primaries, the issue of election fairness is once again in the spotlight.
The plea agreement reveals that Armstrong has intermittently worked as a “petition signature gatherer” for about 20 years. She was employed by certain individuals and groups (referred to as “coordinators”) to collect voter signatures, aiming to include various initiatives, ballot measures, and recall petitions on the California ballot.
Based on the number of registered voter signatures she collected, Armstrong received varying amounts of compensation from the coordinators.
Investigative journalist James O’Keefe publicly exposed the “California election fraud case” in March through an undercover surveillance video, indicating that signature collectors were hired by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
For this reason, Armstrong drove around the Los Angeles area and sometimes visited Skid Row to target individuals. Skid Row, located in downtown Los Angeles, is a small area but one of the most severely affected by homeless issues.
Federal prosecutors allege that Skid Row became a convenient location for Armstrong to collect signatures, where she frequently paid homeless individuals in cash, typically $2 to $3, and provided cigarettes and phone cards in exchange, enticing them to sign petition forms.
Court documents show that many of the homeless individuals residing in Skid Row were not registered voters. To receive the highest compensation from the coordinators, starting at the latest from 2025, Armstrong brought a stack of voter registration forms to Skid Row, paying homeless individuals to fill out the forms before signing the petition.
Many homeless individuals do not have fixed addresses. Armstrong repeatedly provided her old address in Los Angeles for homeless individuals to use when filling out forms. These registration forms granted the fillers both California and federal voting eligibility simultaneously.
Given California’s practice of automatically mailing mail-in ballots to every registered voter, it means that some of the ballots under the homeless individuals’ names are likely to be sent to Armstrong’s old address, preventing the homeless from receiving their own ballots.
It is currently unclear how many people have completed voter registration through this method. Brown Armstrong faces a maximum of five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $10,000 fine.