HERNANDEZ VOTE HARVESTING MACHINE GOING DOWN

By Juan Montoya
The Texas Attorney General's Office is doing it one politiquera at a a time.
To those voters in southeast Cameron County who have been waiting since 2012 and before for the scourge of paid politiqueras abusing the elderly in adult day-care canters and manipulating the mail-in votes of the gullible elderly, the wheels of justice seem to be moving slowly.
But just within the last few months, there has been movement seen in the local courts as the Texas Attorney General's Office prosecutors move against politiqueras who have been associated with different politicians to harvest votes.
In March, Facunda Banda Garcia pleaded guilty to Unlawful assistance of a voter and fined $233 and sent to a three-day jail sentence with one day credit. She served her time and was released.
Yet, still waiting in the wings is Sara Perales, a politiquera closely allied to the Ernie-Norma and Erin Hernandez vote-harvesting machine. Perales was indicted on two counts of a mail-in vote offense for handling a carrier envelope by a person other than the voter.
She attended a pre-trial hearing today in Judge David Gonzalez's Cameron County Court-at-Law 3 and her case was moved to August 19 after her attorney Enrique Juarez failed to show. Her alleged offenses date back to the 2012 elections.
Alongside her was Vicenta Guajardo Verino who is charged with 10 counts of the same offenses as Perales stemming from the 2012 Democratic primary and runoff. Her attorney is Rey Cisneros, who also failed to show and her case was reset to Aug. 19 also.
Sources close to the AG's Office and the local chapter of Citizens Against Voter Abuse (CAVA) indicate both women are prepared to enter guilty pleas and accept at least a year's probation plus fines on the charges.
Sources say that as part of their pleas, they have agreed to give a full disclosure of their vote-harvesting activities to the AG's Office, including the names of he candidates who paid them to manipulate the votes on their behalf.
"This is not over by a long shot," said source. "Prosecuting the perpetrators – the people who paid them – is a little more difficult. But more is coming."
One defendant that appears to be fighting the indictments against her stemming from the 2012 election is Margarita Ozuna, a politiquera historically aligned with the Hernandez machine. Despite the assertions of a local blogger that he single-handedly put Ozuna out of business after the 2010 elections, the current charges date to the Erin Hernandez-Yolanda Begum runoff election in 2012.She was charged with seven counts stemming from allegations she committed mail-in fraud by handling the carrier envelopes of voters without their consent.
In her defense, court-appointed attorney Richard Nuñez filed a special plea of double jeopardy in Judge Laura Betancourt's County Court At-Law 2 because he claimed that the offenses arose out of the same criminal act, and therefore Ozuna could not be tried again.
In response, Asst. Texas AG Jonathan White countered that Ozuna was not entitled to the protection because "each instance of 'ballot harvesting is a separate and distinct criminal act, the prior offense occurred more than two years prior to the current offenses charged, in a different election, involving different candidates; and the prior offense involved different victims."
Additionally, White told the court that "even within the same criminal episode (which Ms. Ozuna's 2010 and 2012 offenses are not), the same criminal offense can be committed multiple times, without invoking double jeopardy."
"Here," continues White, "the voters were different, the places where the ballots were harvested were different, the dates were different. the elections were different, the candidates were different, the potential victims (voters, candidates, and populace) were different, and the Election Code statutes violated were different."
Judge Betancourt agreed with White and denied Nuñez's motion and the case is set to go to trial on August 10.
Between now and then many things can happen. Ozuna can agree to a plea bargain with the AG in return for telling them which candidates paid her to harvest the mail-in votes. Or her court-appointed attorney can try to defend her in court and take his chances of a conviction and a jail term for his client.
Whichever way, there are some people – the Hernandezes included – who will have to sweat it out until then and see what she and her attorney decide they want to do.