ERIN HERNANDEZ VOTE-HARVESTER OPERATIVE ARRESTED

By Juan Montoya
The other half of the Joey Garza- Ralph Elizondo main-in vote harvesting tandem has turned himself in.
A self-serving press release by the Cameron County District Attorney's Office blandly stated that:
Brownsville resident Rafael Angel Elizondo turned himself into Cameron County authorities today following a February indictment on a voter fraud charge. 
Elizondo, 64, was indicted on one count of possession of 10 marked ballots, without the consent of the voter, committed on or about July 31, 2012. The charge is a third-degree felony. The investigation was conducted by the Attorney General’s Office and the FBI, with the cooperation and assistance of the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office. The investigation continues, and more indictments could follow."
When the indictments against Garza – Elizondo's son-in-law – there was no mention of the fact that both of the politiqueros were in the employ of the Hernandez vote-harvesting machine made up of Ernie Hernandez, his wife Norma and their daughter Erin. In fact, that is Erin with her little vote pickers in the photo at right.
 Garza was charged with only five counts of tampering with a marked ballot against both men were committed on or about July 31, 2012.
During the 2012 runoff election for JP 2-2 between Yolanda Begum and Erin Hernandez Garcia, Garza and Elizondo were identified  as two of the Hernandez's most loyal politiqueros.
The same politiqueros and politiqueras identified with the vote-harvesting machine that delivered the votes to Ernie Hernandez's 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 for Hernandez is identified as Garza, 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.
Elizondo's name also appears on some of the mail-in ballots.
Some individuals in certain quarters are still in denial that it was the results of the independent investigation conducted by Begum, Mary Helen Flores and members of Citizens Against Voter Abuse (CAVA), and a group of volunteers including voting statistician Laura Miniel which identified individuals in the cadre of politiqueros and politqueras under the direction of Norma Hernandez who engaged in blatant acts of voter fraud involving the mail-in ballots and early voting by hauling unsuspecting elderly clients of adult day-care clients in rented vans.
If the critics had been there, they would have witnessed the meticulous investigative work done on the copies of the mail-in ballots, the carrier envelopes, the signatures of the voters, and seen the taped interviews with elderly voters who were cheated out of their voting rights.
In those interviews – carried out in person at the voters' homes in the poorest barrios of the city – the victims of these politiqueros recounted how "la señora del poll tax" would come to inquire whether they had received their mail-in ballot, sometimes filled it out for them, and then took it with her.
Later, when they were asked why Garza or Elizondo's signature appeared on the carrier envelope, they had no idea who the people were.
The group turned over their findings to the FBI who later contacted the Texas AG Office. They aloso made PowerPoint presentations to investigators with the Texas Rangers showing how the votes from those ballots in specific precincts manipulated by these politiqueros appeared as votes cast for Erin Hernandez. In some cases, they were the only votes cast in those precincts by mail.
These Hernandez politiqueros were picked out by the elderly voters when the interviewers showed them photos of various politiqueros. 

Begum also filed a lawsuit against Garcia in the 357th District Court and charged that her family and network of politiqueras like Margarita Ozuna, Garza and Elizondo – among others – 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.
That case was thrown out because the judge reasoned that Hernandez would not be able to defend herself of her right to the office given the amount of time left before she was due to take office and would amount to depriving her of a right.
As one who accompanied some of these interviewers, who spoke personally to the voters in the bowels of Cameron Park, Southmost, La 421, and other poor barrios and who saw Miniel develop the statistical model that clearly identified the harvesters (and harvesting) in action, it will be difficult to deny that the path clearly shown authorities by these individual private citizens had nothing to do with the indictments obtained by the AG's Office.
DA Saenz, by the way, was also approached beforehand with the evidence, listened politely, and told them that his hands were tied. Now that office is trying to ride the coattails of the AG's Office indictments on voter fraud.
"Losing an election is like losing a son," Saenz told close associates. "You can cry and complain all you want but you will never bring him back."
And it is disingenuous at best that the same people that defended the Herandezes and berated the efforts to expose mail-in and early-voting fraud in Erin's election now try to wash their hands and distance themselves from them and their politiqueros.
If the individuals named above had not invested their time, money and talents to exposing the Hernandez vote-harvesting machine, it is probable that the scourge of blatant manipulation of the elderly through mail-in ballots and hauling them to the voting booth in vans from adult day-care centers would still be the norm here. Perhaps, just perhaps, because of them one of these days we will actually have a clean election devoid of this type of fraud.
We owe Begum, Flores, CAVA, Miniel, and all those who helped a debt of gratitude.