Homeless people on Skid Row were paid to register to vote, feds charge

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A longtime signature gatherer will plead guilty to paying homeless people on Skid Row to help get initiatives on the ballot, federal prosecutors said Monday, part of an effort to crack down on what they claim is widespread voter fraud across the state.Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina del Rey agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of paying a person to register to vote, prosecutors announced Monday.She faces up to five years in prison.Armstrong, who worked for 20 years gathering signatures for ballot initiatives, would give people on Skid Row $2 to $3 — or, sometimes, a cigarette or a phone cord — in exchange for their signature to help qualify a measure for the ballot, according to her plea agreement.

Skid Row, an area in downtown Los Angeles, has the densest concentration of homeless people in the county.Starting in 2025, Armstrong would also register neighborhood residents to vote, sometimes using her former home address, according to court records.Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S.

attorney for the Central District of California, said authorities began investigating Armstrong because of a video circulated by James O’Keefe, founder of far-right group Project Veritas, showing people on Skid Row getting paid for their signatures.“Once we saw these videos, we went to work,” Essayli said at a news conference announcing the charge.“We will keep prosecuting and exposing this problem.”The announcement comes as the federal government seeks to push forward with its lawsuit demanding California turn over its voter rolls for an audit.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit in January, calling the request “unprecedented and illegal,” and said federal authorities were trying to “abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots.” Oral arguments in the appeal begin Tuesday.Essayli said the state should take note of the charges against Armstrong and wel...