FIVE LITTLE MAIL-IN INDIANS...THEN THERE WERE NONE

By Juan Montoya
The apartment complex off Paredes Line Road has seen its better days.
The manager of the half block of two-story brick buildings says they are not apartments, but rather owner-owned "condominiums."
The parking lot sports more than a few large potholes that must be navigated by motorists to prevent damage to their cars. The grass is unkempt. A swimming pool – once the center of social activity – lies empty behind locked wrought-iron gates.
"These units have the bedroom at the top of the stairs," said the manager. "There's a kitchen and a small living room downstairs. You can't have too many people inside at one time."
Yet, from one of these efficiency "condominiums," five mail-in votes were cast in the runoff July 31. The names of the voters does not appear in the door or mail box of the units. And the manager says he does not remember five people living at the unit in addition to a young tenant and his father who now are the only ones to occupy the dwelling.
"There's no way seven people can live in one of those units," he said. "As far as I know, that many people have never lived there."
And yet, a statistical analysis of the mail-in votes cast in that runoff election indicate that they made up part of the total cast in that voting precinct in favor of JP 2-2 Erin Hernandez Garcia in her race against Yolanda Begum. And the name of the woman on the mailed envelopes is none other than a well-known politiquera allied with the Hernandezes.
But how could it be that the mail-in votes could have been cast from that unit?
"They were," said Mary Helen Flores, an anti-voting fraud activist with Citizens Against Voter Abuse (CAVA). "We have gone to knock on the door at least three times and the current tenant said that the voters no longer live there. At first he said that they had gone on vacation and would be back later. When we asked when, he said that they would be gone for months."
However, the tenant also told other people – including the manager of the complex – that the people listed as voting from his unit's address had left the apartment at least four months ago. That raises yet another question. If they left the apartment four months ago, how is it that they could have applied for the mail-in ballots from the Brownsville address. And the killer, of course. How could they have voted by mail from that address if they had been gone for two months after the July 31 runoff?
Could it be that someone had applied and received the mail-in ballots, filled them out an returned them, without their consent or knowledge? Did someone have their cards?
And here's the kicker: All of the five mail-in voters were listed as having an incapacity.
 Those people have never lived there."