BOIL BOIL, TOIL AND TROUBLE AT ELECTION TIME

"Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble..."
from Macbeth, William Shakespeare


By Juan Montoya

And so the Wicked Sisters have pulled off another slight-of-hand and snatched a victory from the jaws of defeat for Erin Hernandez Garcia in her runoff race with political innocent Yolanda Begum.
Begum, who at first thought elections were contests where the electorate would freely choose their candidates just like in the movies, instead came face to face with a dollar-greased political machine with operators such as Norma Hernandez, her opponent's mother, who along with politiqueras (ward heelers, political activists, etc., pick one) who stopped at nothing to achieve their ends.

In a well-rehearsed scenario, they descended upon gullible elderly in local day care centers and hauled them off packed in rental vans like rolling campaign buses where they were coerced into voting for their ticket. Inside the vans, they were kept outside the polling places within sight of election judges who obligingly passed the drivers and their aides a handful of ballots to be filled in at their leisure.

In one instance, Norma, who wields the influence of being the wife of a county commissioner like a bludgeon, browbeat Cameron County elections Administrator Roger Ortiz within earshot of other candidates and their assistants. Meek little Ortiz stood there and took it like an obedient little clerk and got a public dressing down for having the unmitigated gall to stand up to Ernie's wife.

How dare he even think of standing in her way when the vans filled with the elderly, the mentally-disabled and the illiterate were hauled in with promises of a chicken plate in return for marking their ballots the way she wanted them to?

Next thing they will think is that they are actually able exercise their free will and select a candidate of their choice. Can you imagine that?

Across the poor barrios of Cameron Park and Southmost, the elderly voters are hunted down and dispossessed of their ballots, thinking that by sealing them they will actually be mailed by the politiqueras who pick them up and obligingly tell them they they will do them the favor of putting on the stamps and dropping them off at the post office gratis.

On more than one occasion, those ballots never make it to the post office until they have been steamed opened and the votes changed to suit the politiqueras who picked them up. Then they are mailed to be counted by the elections office and the wishes of the electorate are negated in favor of the cheater.

On other occasions, illiterate voters actually cast mail-in votes after scribbling what looks like their name on the applications for mail-in votes and later on the outside of the ballot envelopes when the politiqueras come and pick them up from them.

Cameron Park is Margarita Ozuna's territory. She know where every elderly registered voter lives. Come election time, she, along with cohorts Ana Perales, Juanita Garcia, Facunda and daughter Beatriz Garcia, descend upon their homes and retrieve the ballots which they receive in the mail. After all, they know where the ballots will come, having "assisted" the targets in their respective adult day care center. In some cases, the voters are led to believe that they are somehow connected to the elections office and what they are doing is perfectly moral and legal.
But don't look for her name on any of the documents associated with the ballot or the mail-in envelopes. You won't find it. Instead, the envelopes will bear the name of someone else (usually one Juan Rodriguez or another male name) to hide her role in illegally harvesting that vote.

But that's not all. Across the panorama of the city's southeast side (La Southmost, La 421, La Doce), one can find her trail into the humble homes of the elderly. 

"Vino la señora Dora a levantar las boletas," they say using one of her many aliases.

The Las Prietas (West Side) neighborhood is Herminia Becerra's turf. Entire blocks vote by mail from her Ground Zero home on Western Blvd.

She will tell you that the people seek her out and that she helps them out with their legal problems with the sheriff, the constables, the justices of the peace, the cops, etc. Their vote, she says, is a kind of quid pro quo for all the favors she performs at no cost.

"Yo no quiero dinero, le digo a los candidatos," she says. "A mi no me des dinero. Yo domas les pido material para distribuir."

But if anyone has made the mail-in vote and walk-in early vote an industry, it is Norma Hernandez. In fact, she is so adept at controlling that vote that she feels she is entitled to it because of her investment in time to nurture the trust and confidence of the voters.

Between these three (and another dozen operatives), they have been able to rule the political roost and thumb their noses at a supposedly democratic system of political representation. The sad part about it is that the very people who are supposed to keep the playing field level are themselves elected though this process and feel hog-tied and helpless to right this wrong.

Law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and court clerks all use the system to stay in office. And where are the federal knights in shining armor who claim they are here to ferret out corruption at every level of civilian life?

Until someone does something, the Wicked Sisters will continue to give us toil and trouble at the elections cauldron.