California Petition Collector Charged With Paying People to Register to Vote
A California woman who worked for years as a signature collector for ballot initiatives has been charged with paying individuals, including homeless people in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles, to register to vote.
Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina del Rey, also known as “Anika,” is charged with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison. She has agreed to plead guilty and is scheduled for an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, with a guilty plea expected in the coming weeks.
According to her plea agreement, Armstrong worked for about 20 years as a petition circulator, paid by “coordinators” to collect voter signatures for initiatives, referendums, and recalls in California. She drove around Los Angeles collecting signatures and was paid per registered voter signature, with pay varying by initiative. She often worked in Skid Row because of the high concentration of people willing to sign for $2 to $3, though many were not registered to vote.
Starting no later than 2025, she began paying people not only to sign petitions but also to complete voter registration forms. She sometimes gave homeless individuals her former Los Angeles address to use when they had none.
Because California automatically sends a vote-by-mail ballot to every registered voter, this also meant ballots in some homeless individuals’ names could have the potential to be sent to Armstrong’s former residence where the homeless individual did not live or collect mail.
On Jan. 30, as part of her ongoing scheme, Armstrong knowingly and willfully paid another person to register to vote. She paid the person for the purpose of causing that person to register to vote in federal elections.
Subsequently, the FBI and investigators with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California investigated this matter. Attorneys Michael Wheat and Nandor Kiss for the Central District of California are prosecuting this case.
