Surrounded by supporters and news media, Yolanda Begum, a candidate in the July 31 JP 2-2 runoff election against Erin Hernandez Garcia, said she filed a petition to contest the election results and said she will prove that her opponent and known Brownsville politiqueros committed "widespread" fraud to achieve a win in the race.
Her lawsuit was filed Thursday in the 357th District Court presided by Judge Leonel Alejandro. He is expected to appoint a judge from outside the county for the case.
Begum, through her attorney Michael R. Cowen, said that the "Hernandez family (Ernie, his wife Norma, and Erin and her siblings), aided by their network of politiqueras, have stolen two consecutive Democratic primary elections in Cameron County."The first was in May 10, 2010 when Ernie Hernandez was declared the winer over Ruben Peña, who then sued and was "able to prove fraud, but due to Hernandez's abuse of the discovery process, was unable to prove a sufficient number of illegal votes to overturn the election.
"Hernandez and his wife (Norma), who is also a politiquera, avoided being served with subpoenas and did not attend the trial. The politiqueras also avoided service and absconded rather than appearing at trial. Numerous persons who supposedly voted by mail refused to appear at trial after being served...
Erin Hernandez represented her father, (Ernie) Hernandez, in this election contest, it states.
Begum's petition states that in the Democratic primary, she was in a runoff with Erin on July 31. She claims that in that contest held Tuesday, the Hernandez and their politiqueras used numerous illegal tactics to obtain cotes that included:
*Procuring illegal mail-in votes
*...discarding or altering mail-in votes intended to be cast for Begum
*Paying personnel at adult day cares and/or nursing homes to allow them to take vans full of voters, many of whom were elderly and/or mentally disabled, and then improperly influencing their vote. for example, the van driver would claim that the occupants could not walk into the poll to vote privately, but instead would get the ballots and pass them out to the occupants. The driver would, in violation of Section 61.008 of the Election Code, show and tell the occupants to vote for Garcia. Further, there were sample ballots and push cards in the vans while voting was occurring in the van, in violation of the Election Code.*Take mail-in ballots from the voters, in violation of the code...to ensure that the votes were for Erin Garcia, and to discard or alter those that voted for Begum.
*...illegally offering things of value, including meals and gift cards, in exchange for votes...
Begum charges that as a result of these illegal acts, illegal votes were counted, and that election officials prevented eligible persons from voting, failed to count legal votes and engaged in other fraud of illegal conduct or made a mistake.
Some of those said to have illegally solicited votes for Erin Garcia in the mail-in and early walk-in voting include Norma Hernandez, Ernie Hernandez Jr., Herminia Becerra, Amadeo Rodriguez Jr., and Margarita Ozuna, among others.
Begum's petition seeks relief saying that once she shows the number of illegal votes cast, they should be subtracted from Garcia's total and the court should determine the true victor. In the stead, if the court is unable to determine for whom the illegal votes were cast, it should consider those votes in determining its judgement. The court could also declare the contest void, order a new election, and assess costs against Garcia.
The Begum lawsuit is under some time constraints as the decision must be reached before the early voting ballots are printed for the November election. That means that Begum's attorneys have until perhaps the next six weeks to gather and present their evidence. Toward that end, they met in Cowen's office and were dividing their assignment in preparation.
"I had requested information from Roger (Ortiz, the Cameron County Elections Administrator) two weeks ago and today they said that they could not start processing my request until I paid for it," said Mary Helen Flores, of Citizens Against Voter Abuse (CAVA). They had never done that before. Right there we lost two weeks already."
Cowen said he was ready to subpoena all the documentation related to the runoff election should the delays become more blatant. He said his staff would be looking at all the ways that fraud had been committed by the Erin Hernandez camp and show the court that the results should be voided.
"We are going to expose the way fraud was committed to the light of day," he said.
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