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 Ray, 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 two to three dollars — 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 they began investigating Armstrong due to 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,” said Essayli 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 their 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 welcome the audit “with an open arm.”
Armstrong worked as a “petition circulator” and was paid to collect signatures to qualify measures for the ballot, according to the plea agreement. Petition circulators are typically paid per signature of registered voter they collect.
Prosecutors also announced a hate crime charge Monday for Zaid Gitesatani, 28 of Carlsbad, who they say assaulted a Jewish man during a protest at a Pico Robertson synagogue in June 2024. The protest turned violent with clashes breaking out between pro-Palestinian supporters, who were protesting an event hosted by the synagogue to promote land for sale in Israel, and pro-Israel counterprotesters.
Gitesatani is expected to make his initial appearance Monday afternoon.
Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
