FED-TAGO TASK FORCE INVESTIGATES MAIL-IN VOTE VICTIMS

By Juan Montoya
For the past four days, scores of federal and Texas Attorney General Office investigators have been knocking on the doors of potential victims of the vote harvesting machine that put Justice of the Peace Erin H. Garcia in office in last year's runoff election.
Sources close to the task force have indicate that they have sought to question those voters who cast ballots using the usual politiqueros and politiqueras associated with the Ernie and Norma Hernandez vote-harvesting operation.
Among some of the names that have been mentioned are Tomasita Chavez, Margarita Ozuna, Herminia Becerra, Ralph Elizondo, Joey Garza, Amadeo Rodriguez Jr., and others.
"Two men went to see Tomasita's voters at the Brownsville High Rise and they were wearing guns and asking them about their vote," said a politiquera on Monday.
By Wednesday, the reports from the politiqueras indicted that the probe was wider in scope than the voters at the High-Rise and included all areas of southesast Cameron County, especially Cameron Park, Las Prietas, the Southmost area and downtown barrios.
According to one politiquera source, Ozuna was contacted and refused to answer the investigators' questions.
"She told them she had already said everything she was going to say," she said.
Ozuna is currently serving probation after pleading no contest to an elections code violation she allegedly committed during the election of Ernie Hernandez in 2010.
"I want to emphasize that the people being interviewed are considered victims of the vote-harvesting machines," said a source close to the investigating team. "Their votes were harvested by certain politiqueras in the employ of certain politicians."
The mail-in vote has long been said to have been manipulated by local politicians who use a score of politiqueras to acquire the edge in local races. In 2010, Ruben Peña filed suit in court and vowed to show that Ernie Hernandez had used the politiqueras to harvest votes form the elderly and mentally impaired to inflate his vote totals. In the 2010 Democratic primary, Hernandez received 1,206 votes to Peña’s 1,121 votes. But in the runoff, after Peña had beaten Hernandez in the runoff election votes 1,863 to 1,701, it was the mail-in votes harvested by Ozuna and Becerra (240 for Hernandez to 34 for Peña) that gave Hernandez the win.
Peña brought Hernandez to court and came within 7 votes of the 49-vote difference to overturn that election before a judge from Hidalgo County put an abrupt halt on the process.
Hernandez was declared the winner over Peña, who was "able to prove fraud, but due to Hernandez's abuse of the discovery process, was unable to prove a sufficient number of illegal votes to overturn the election.
"Hernandez and his wife (Norma), who is also a politiquera, avoided being served with subpoenas and did not attend the trial. The politiqueras also avoided service and absconded rather than appearing at trial. Numerous persons who supposedly voted by mail refused to appear at trial after being served..."
A judge decided that there would not be enough time for the lawsuit to be heard before Hernandez took office.
The impact of those harvested votes was never more apparent than during the runoff election between Yolanda Begum and Erin H. Garcia.
The same politiqueros and politiqueras identified with the vote-harvesting machine that delivers the votes to Ernie, wife Norma, were identified by Begum in a lawsuit in 2012 for manipulating the mail-in vote of the elderly and mentally impaired. In a couple of cases, illiterate voters were said to have voted by mail.
In that primary, Erin Hernandez Garcia had lost by some 500 votes and ended up winning with less than 200 during the runoff.
In the graphic included here, the voter assistant who hauled in the elderly voters in rented vans is identified as Joey Garza, an Hernandez operative who also signed his name on countless mail-in ballots. Yet, none of the voters interviewed by investigators recall seeing him or fellow
politiquero Ralph Elizondo pick up their ballots at their homes.

Begum also filed a lawsuit against Garcia in the 357th District Court and charged that her family and network of politiqueras like Ozuna and Garza used numerous illegal tactics to obtain votes in the runoff: discarding or altering mail-in votes intended for Begum; paying personnel at adult day care centers and nursing homes to allow drivers to take vans full of voters, many elderly or mentally disabled and influencing their votes; taking mail-in ballots from voters; and offering meals and gift cards in exchange for votes.
“The Hernandez family, aided by their network of politiqueras, has stolen two consecutive Democratic primary runoff elections in Cameron County,” the election contest stated, referring to this election and the 2010 runoff between Hernandez and Ruben Pena for the county commissioner seat,  Begum's lawyers charged.
A visiting state judge also threw out the case saying that in the case that Begum prevailed, Erin would not have the time to appeal the decision and would be deprived of a right.
Now, as the federal and state investigators comb the barrios of Brownsville talking to the mail-in vote harvest victims, can the Hernandezes put out what has now become a widespread brush fire that might result in getting them or their politiquero minions indicted?
And Brownsville Housing Authority directors and board members might well reconsider whether they should continue facilitating the harvest of their elderly clients' votes in face of the investigation that has targeted that facility.