LA Woman Paid Homeless People to Register to Vote

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]So, first I want to talk about voter fraud and the case of United States versus Brown Armstrong and we'll have a graphic up there in a moment.

[00:00:08]The Department of Justice has charged a long-time California signature gatherer under 52 USC section 10307 subsection C with one count of paying another person to register to vote in a federal election. The defendant, Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, has signed a plea agreement and has admitted her guilt on this charge. According to the plea agreement and my colleague Bill Assali will be able to answer any specific questions about it. She worked as a petition circulator, aka signature gatherer, here in Los Angeles for approximately 20 years. And starting in 2025 or so, after Ms. Brown Armstrong had had a practice of going down to Skid Row here in Los Angeles, getting homeless people to sign these signature petitions that had to do with qualifying ballot measures and etc., um she would sometimes find that the signatures would be disqualified because the people signing these signature petitions weren't actually registered to vote. So, to remedy this flaw in her business arrangements, she would then gather, starting in 2025, stacks of voter registration forms from the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters and then go to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles to have homeless people first sign the voter registration forms and then sign the signature petitions. And she did this in exchange for cash and other items of value, inducements both for the voter registration and for the signature petitions. These were often small sums of cash, just a few dollars, as well as cigarettes and phone cards. On several occasions, when the homeless person had no formal address to enter on the voter registration form, Ms. Brown Armstrong provided them with a fake address, namely her own former address in Los Angeles to write on the voter registration form.

[00:02:01]Now, the potential charges uh and sentence rather would include 5 years in prison, 3 years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $10,000.

[00:02:10]This case is important because it shows how easy it is under California law to corrupt the state's voter rolls and thereby corrupt the state and federal elections administered by the state.