Tag: Electoral fraud

— The mayor of a South Texas border city was arrested Thursday on charges that he orchestrated an illegal voting scheme in which he asked residents of nearby towns to change their addresses so that they could cast votes for him. The arrests of Richard Molina, the mayor of Edinburg, and his wife, Dalia Molina, came amid a bitter political fight in Texas over election fraud, and were made in a region with a long history of voting improprieties and public corruption scandals. Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, whose office oversaw the investigation of Mr. Molina, has aggressively prosecuted voter fraud cases, even as a recent attempt by the state to purge noncitizens from the voter rolls was plagued by problems and inaccuracies. According to court documents, Mr. Molina and his wife were both registered as volunteer voter registrars in the 2017 election and were authorized to help people fill out voter registration applications. “The mayor is innocent of what he’s being accused of,” said Mr. Molina’s lawyer, Carlos A. Garcia. There’s a power struggle in Hidalgo County, specifically in Edinburg.” Cary Zayas, the spokeswoman for the City of Edinburg, said in a statement defending the mayor that the arrests “have no impact on the city’s day to day operations.” Mr. Molina and his wife were arraigned late Thursday morning in Edinburg, a city of 90,000 residents that is next door to McAllen and home to a University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus. In January, the Texas Secretary of State’s office said it had discovered that about 95,000 people identified as noncitizens had matching voter registration records in the state, and that about 58,000 of them had voted in one or more Texas elections. Mr. Molina was arrested in the Democratic stronghold of the Rio Grande Valley, the result of an investigation led by a Republican attorney general. The Rio Grande Valley, which borders Mexico, has a long history of voter fraud. In January, Mr. Paxton’s Election Fraud Unit arrested a woman in Starr County for using a dead person’s identity to vote illegally in a 2016 Democratic primary.

Democrats said on Friday they will not swear a North Carolina Republican into his US House seat until state officials resolve questions surrounding his election. The North Carolina elections board has refused to certify the race between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready, while it investigates irregularities concerning absentee ballots. Harris holds a slim lead in unofficial results, but officials are looking into criminal allegations against an operative hired by his campaign. Absentee-ballot fraud scandal speaks to wider issue of racism in North Carolina Read more Confusing the picture, a state court panel ruled on Thursday that the current elections board should disband at noon on Friday, which it duly did. The state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, announced he would appoint an interim board. In a statement to the Washington Post late on Friday afternoon, the incoming House majority leader, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said: “Given the now well-documented election fraud that took place in [the district in question], Democrats would object to any attempt by Harris to be seated on 3 January.” The US constitution states that the House is the judge of the elections of its members and the final arbiter of all contests. In North Carolina, Cooper’s move to seek an interim board would allow it to proceed with an 11 January evidentiary hearing about the 9th district race, until a new law governing the statewide elections panel can take effect on 31 January. Cooper said he would appoint both Democrats and Republicans to comply with pre-2016 state elections law he says is temporarily back in force. But the chairman of the state Republican party, Robin Hayes, argued that Cooper’s proposal was an “illegal sham” and said no Republicans would participate. The board turned down his request.

Washington (CNN)North Carolina's State Board of Elections on Friday named Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr., a political operative who worked for Republican candidate Mark Harris, as "a person of interest in connection with an alleged absentee ballot operation in the congressional district." The news comes as the Wake County District Attorney's office and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation investigate criminal allegations that Dowless used absentee ballots to alter the vote in Bladen County in the race for North Carolina's 9th Congressional District. Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by only 905 votes. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman confirmed Friday that the FBI is assisting in the investigation. The FBI would not confirm or deny if it was investigating. Dowless worked for Red Dome Group, a GOP political consulting firm that Harris paid more than $400,000. He has not returned CNN's calls. On Friday, Harris tweeted a video statement where he said he would support a new election if there is evidence of election fraud. "I didn't serve overseas in the Marines to come home to NC and watch a criminal, bankrolled by my opponent, take away people's very right to vote," McCready tweeted. Red Dome had hired Dowless to perform get-out-the-vote work for Harris' campaign.

Candidates tend to distance themselves from the election day activities of campaign operatives, Berry added, "but they still know that there is a system" of vote buying in place. In the current federal inquiry, it's not clear which races have drawn the interest of federal authorities beyond the 2015 Tangipahoa Parish president's race and more recent municipal contests in Amite. John Bel Edwards, both told The Advocate that their campaigns have not been contacted by federal authorities in connection with the vote-buying inquiry. "Nobody associated with my campaign has ever told me they've been contacted by federal authorities for any reason," the governor said. An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the investigation. He has not used Ruffino since 2011, he said. He was indicted again in 1991 on allegations of violating the state's public records law after he was accused of refusing to allow a Roseland citizen to view the town's sewer and water service billing records. Federal law enforcement records obtained by The Advocate show this is not the first time authorities have received allegations of vote buying in Tangipahoa Parish. In 2004, a confidential informant told the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that Artie Thompson, a former DEA task force agent and Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office deputy, had hired him to buy votes for Tim Gideon, a former Ponchatoula police chief who ran for sheriff against Daniel Edwards in November 2003. The informant said he was given more cash at that meeting and was told to give voters $5 to $10 each to vote for Gideon.