CASCOS VOWS TO HELP CAVA THWART VOTER FRAUD

By Juan Montoya
Saying that recent news reports and blogger posts indicated to him that "we have a problem and we need to fix it," Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos says he will assist Citizens Against Voter Abuse activists and local voters to diminish the impact of fraudulent voting in local elections.
Cascos's statements came during during an hour-long informal meeting at the Dancy Building attended by Cameron County Elections Administrator Roger Ortiz, Cascos, CAVA reps Irma Peña and Mary Helen Flores, Jim and Nena Barton of Mean Mister Brownsville, Jerry McHale, of Brownsville Blues, county judge administrative asst. Cris Valadez, and myself.
 It was obvious from the get-go that the county judge wanted to focus on the hands-on solutions to the problems that occurred during the last runoff elections July 31. During that contest, the number of mail-in and early walk-in votes determined the outcome of races limited to jurisdictions that were not countywide.In particular, the races that were heavily in the county's southeast side were primarily affected by the alleged illegal votes.
Those races were the JP 2-2, Pct. 2 Constable runoffs. In the first race, Erin Hernandez was declared the winner over Yolanda Begum and Abel Gomez was declared the victor over Pete Avila.
In the District Attorney runoff, Luis Saenz defeated Carlos Masso countywide. However, if the voting had been determined by the Brownsville voting precincts along with the write-in and early walk-in votes, Masso would have also won.
"If anyone knows how elections can turn, it's me," Cascos said referring to the two-month delay between before he was declared the winner in his 2010 election for county judge over John Wood, which was also presided y Ortiz.
CAVA's Flores had prepared a list of specific questions which were turned over to Ortiz for him to answer and focused on the procedural requirements of the Texas Election Code and the appointment and education of precinct judges. In particular, she said that the appointment of the judges had been left to the discretion of Adriana Villarreal, who has a known personal relationship with the siblings of Amadeo Rodriguez Jr., a known politiquero for the Hernandezes. Rodriguez also was named in a police complaints where he and Norma Hernandez (Erin Hernandez's mother and wife of Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez) were charged with taking elderly voters from day care centers without the permission of their relatives or the center's management.
The abuse of the mail-in and walk-in early voting ballots has long been recognized as a phenomenon that is heavily concentrated in the Brownsville precincts and during these past runoff elections the vote leaned heavily to three candidates: Hernandez, Masso and Gomez. The turnout in the northern and western part of the county generally dilutes the influence of such votes in countywide elections.
It was this aspect of the voting that prompted McHale to inquire of Ortiz whether the authority of his office
did not give him the ability to become pro-active in trying to diminish its impact by acquiring proof in the form of affidavits to seek prosecution of those politiqueras who have made voter fraud an industry.
"You need to prosecute the politiqueras and the people who pay them," he said.
Jim Barton asked whether Ortiz had thought of handing over the 30 to 40 instances of fraud found during the court case resulting from the Ruben Peña-Ernie Hernandez race for county commissioner race which he could have turned over to the District Attorney or the Texas Attorney General.
"I didn't get any cases from the (case) or from the judge," Ortiz said.
However, upon questioning from McHale, Cascos said that on a scale from 1 to 10, he thought the measure of politiqueras' influence in elections in east Cameron County was 7 while Ortiz pegged it at 5.
Toward the close of the meeting, Cascos offered to forward the petition being raised by CAVA to the Secretary of State and the Texas Attorney General and to write a letter asking for specific action for personnel to thwart the influence of voter abuse as soon as the November elections.
"I'll send it off ASAP as soon as you have it ready," he said. "We want to have it ready before November."
Ortiz indicated that he would be preparing a film and visiting the approximately 51 adult day-care centers in the county to warn operators and personnel about violating the Election Code ordinances and the repercussions of allowing the abuse of  elderly voters by candidates and their politiqueras.
Irma Peña said that at the core of CAVA's efforts was the need to make sure that the integrity of the election process in the county was assured.
"That's the most important issue," she said. "That we have honest elections free  from fraud."
During the early voting in the runoff, there were numerous cases where elderly and mentally-impaired voters were herded into rented vans and then the election judges allowing the driver and assistants to take the ballots into the vehicles where campaign literature of the candidates paying them was made available to instruct their charges on how to vote.
"The issue here is we have a problem and we need to fix it," he said.