A 47-year-old Victorville man was arrested Wednesday in connection with a federal grand jury indictment accusing him of paying people on Los Angeles’ Skid Row to sign petitions using stolen identities to qualify initiatives for California elections.
James Brass, 47, and two other petition circulators — Courtney Price, 49, of Jacksonville, Florida, and Jateisha Herron, 33, of Boron — were charged with conspiracy to commit identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony. Brass and Price also are charged with identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony.
Brass is expected to make an initial court appearance Wednesday afternoon in Riverside. It was not immediately clear whether the defendants have attorneys who could comment on the cases
According to the federal indictment, Brass collected signatures and managed a team of petition collectors that included Herron and Price. Brass and Price allegedly handed out registered voters’ stolen identities and paid petition signers to copy the voters’ personal information onto ballot initiative petitions, then fraudulently sign the petitions in those voters’ names, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Brass and Herron then signed declarations on the petitions falsely declaring under penalty of perjury that they witnessed registered voters sign the petitions, according to prosecutors. The petition signatures were gathered from February to August, months ahead of the November election in California, according to the indictment.
The petitions were then turned over to coordinators.
“Brass further knew the false representations about the signatures’ authenticity would result in payments to him from a petition management company,” prosecutors said in a news release. “In total, Brass received approximately $41,600 from coordinators working with one such petition management company.”
California’s statewide ballot initiative process, adopted in October 1911 in a special election, provides a tool voters can use to adopt laws and constitutional amendments without support from the governor or state lawmakers. Part of the ballot qualification process involves collecting enough petition signatures.
For initiative statutes, the number of signatures to qualify for the ballot must be equal to at least 5 percent of the total votes cast for the office of governor in the most recent gubernatorial election. A total of 546,651 signatures are required to qualify an initiative for the upcoming election.
If convicted, the defendants face a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each count.