JUANITOS-COME-LATELY BLOGGERS BLAME MESSENGER; CHIRINOS UP BY 4, ELECTION INTEGRITY QUESTIONED BY BISD WHICH PAID COUNTY $195,000 TO RUN ELECTION, RRUN-RRUN STANDS BY STORY

By Juan Montoya
The first indications that the four-vote difference separating Brownsville Independent School District Place 7 candidate Linda Gill-Martinez from Jose Hector Chirinos had disappeared and changed over to his side came at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday.
At that time, Chirinos poll watcher Eva Salazar emerged from the counting room where the provisional votes were being resolved and counted to tell his supporters that he had a four-vote advantage instead. Now the vote – instead of 14,709 for her and 14,705 for him, had flip-flopped in his favor.
When Gill-Martinez rushed to the door of the counting room and asked judge Maggie Gonzales whether the reports of the new results were true, she was told that the tally had not been complete and that all that happened in the room should be kept confidential until the elections office released the results.
"Then why is she telling everyone that Chirinos is ahead?," Gill-Martinez asked.
At that point, Gonzalez and elections administrator Roger Ortiz had Salazar hand over her hand-written notes of the results and had them placed in an envelope for safekeeping.
However, the damage had been done. Within hours, Chirinos supporters and poll watchers of other candidates had spread the word: Chirinos was ahead by four votes in the new, unreported, tally. By Wednesday morning the news had spread throughout the district.
This afternoon, the Brownsville Herald, citing numerous unofficial sources, said it had confirmed Chirinos' four-point lead.
The Cameron County Ballot Board met until after 3 a.m. Tuesday to determine the validity of more than 600 late, provisional and military ballots. The board includes representatives from the local Democratic and Republican parties.

Ortiz admitted to a local television station that among the votes that were counted by the ballot board included votes that were misplaced and should have been counted on election day and could possibly change the results in close races.
"Some of those ballots were placed in an envelope, because they were folded or something, (and) the machine didn't take them and weren't able to be scanned,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz said these ballots should've been counted on election night, but were overlooked and somehow put aside with election supplies.
It wasn’t until a few days after the election that an employee found the envelopes, from about five or six precincts. He did not say how many votes were involved in the oversight.

He added that he understands some candidates will be upset over those votes being counted just now.

Reports from inside the board room indicate that the process was hampered by the personal idiosyncrasies of Republican board member Norma Tovar who seemed more preoccupied with asserting her authority than to ascertain the results. Later in the evening, the EMS had to be called in to assist her in what appeared to be some sort of stress-related health problem. Two alternates were called to replace her and her mother Maria Luisa, who left the room to help her daughter with her illness.
This morning, Ortiz said that the final tallies had not been added to the totals released after the November 6 election and that the board would meet again to sort through the accepted provisional ballots totals in all the races.
However, whatever the results may finally be, at least some BISD administrators are unhappy with the way the elections process was performed. They say that the district paid the county elections office $195,000 to hold the election. The numerous reports of discrepancies such as ballots being placed in unsecured plastic trash bags before being placed in secure boxes, votes in black bags that had to be counted as provisional after the board thought their job was done, and the appearance of 55 ballots from Rio Hondo in pristine condition as if they hadn't gone through a counting machines have brought the integrity of the process into question, they say.
"I think people believe the integrity of the process has been tainted," said one. "When you have these types of things come to light and change the results that were announced on election day, it damages the credibility of the results."
The BISD administrator said that the district should demand that a hand recount costing about $4,000 be performed on the ballots bat no cost to the school district.

"We paid for an election to be carried out and we didn't get it," he said. "The district should demand that the county do a hand recount to put all these questions to rest. The voters should be assured that the election results are legitimate."
Four other candidates in two close races are also awaiting the outcome of the count.  One is the Constable Pct. 1 contest between incumbent Horacio Zamora. Zamora got 2,501 to challenger Pedro "Pete" Delgadillo's 2,500. The race in the Santa Maria ISD between Adolfo Hinojosa with 314 votes and Juan Jose Morales with 312 is also hinging in the balance.
It was unknown whether the swearing in of the BISD trustees would be affected by the delay n getting a final count. Aside from the Place 7 race, winners Otis Powers, Catalina Presas-Garcia and Minerva Peña were scheduled to be sworn in at tonight's meeting.

Meanwhile, bloggers who have found themselves on the losing side of the ledger in recent elections have weighed in questioning the reports that Chirinos had pulled ahead with the board's count of the provisional and lost votes.

None other than recently-elected JP 2-2 Erin Hernandez Garcia resurrected a Middle-Ages adjective with an incorrect prefix and judged that "El Rrun-Rrun is a completely uncredible (sic) and unbelievable source based on the candidates paying them, not a credible argument at all."

Her paid cyber politiquera Cheezmeh chimed in with his usual erudite commentary and opined that "El Rrun-Rrun is a piece of shit."

Well, we don't know if we agree with that. If we remember correctly, it was Cheezmeh that was paid by both Gill-Martinez and Herrhonor Hernandez Garcia in their election campaigns despite that group's dismal track record in recent elections. Erin's runoff victory over Yolanda Begum was notable for the scale of massive voter fraud that was perpetrated on our citizenry by her campaign team of politiqueros and politiqueras. 

Now they are grooming John Villarreal in his bid for reelection for the City of Brownsville. God help us.

We stand by our story.