California Woman Charged With Paying Homeless People to Register to Vote

The Department of Justice charged a California woman with paying people, including homeless individuals on Los Angeles' Skid Row, to register to vote while she worked as a paid ballot-petition signature collector. "False registrations undermine Americans' faith in elections – even more so when payoffs are involved," assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a press release Monday.

U.S. elections are fair and free from illegal meddling – so that all Americans can accept the results with confidence," Dhillon added.

Marina del Rey resident Anika Brenda Lee Armstrong, 64, solicited signatures for official ballot initiatives, including in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles, often paying people between $2 and $3, according to the DOJ. She was charged with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote and agreed to plead guilty.

Armstrong made her initial court appearance Monday. She worked as a petition circulator for approximately 20 years and would receive payment for each registered voter's signature, according to her plea agreement. The amount she was paid varied depending on the specific ballot initiative.

Row's homeless population were not registered to vote, so prosecutors said Armstrong brought voter registration forms with her and began offering payment to people to complete them. Prosecutors said Armstrong sometimes provided homeless individuals with her former Los Angeles address to list on voter registration forms, which registered them to vote in both California and federal elections.

California automatically sends vote-by-mail ballots to every registered voter. Prosecutors said ballots in some individuals' names could potentially have been sent to Armstrong's former residence, where those individuals did not live or collect mail.

Homeless people are eligible to register to vote so long as they have a location where mail can be received and be properly assigned to a voting precinct, according to the California Secretary of State.