The US Department of Justice announced on Thursday (September 9) a new case involving voter registration fraud: 47-year-old James Brass, also known as Lord, from California, along with two other defendants, are facing two felony charges each for conspiracy to commit identity fraud. They are accused of using stolen voter identities and paying individuals in Skid Row, a poverty-stricken area in downtown Los Angeles, to sign petition forms.
Early on Thursday, the FBI arrested Brass from Victorville, San Bernardino County, California. Federal prosecutors allege that he and the other two defendants paid individuals in the Skid Row area to obtain false petition signatures using stolen voter identities, with the aim of getting relevant ballot measures qualified for inclusion on California’s ballots.
According to the indictment issued by a federal grand jury on Wednesday, Brass was in charge of managing a signature collection team and personally collecting signatures. He also employed two collectors (also defendants), 49-year-old Florida woman Courtney Price and 33-year-old California woman Jateisha Herron.
Between February and August this year, the three defendants used a database to identify registered California voters. Brass and Price then provided the stolen voter identity information to local homeless individuals in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles, paying them to copy the voters’ personal information onto petition forms and to fraudulently sign the forms in the voters’ names.
After signing, Brass and Herron would sign false declarations below the petition forms, claiming they had personally witnessed the registered voter’s signature and stating they would bear perjury responsibility if the content was untrue.
Prosecutors pointed out that Brass and Herron knowingly made false statements about the authenticity of the signatures, yet still handed over these forged petition forms to several individuals, resulting in the inclusion of these forged and fraudulent signatures in the voter qualification signature count for relevant ballot initiatives. Brass received approximately $41,600 in compensation for this.
The above-mentioned indictment is only an accusation. If convicted in the future, Brass could face up to five years of federal imprisonment for each charge.
Brass is not the first person to be indicted for election fraud in the Skid Row area. On May 18 of this year, 64-year-old California woman Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, also known as “Anika,” faced felony charges for allegedly paying individuals in the poverty-stricken area to engage in voter registration. She later agreed to plead guilty to charges of “paying others to induce them to engage in voter registration.”