McAllen voter fraud case finally falls apart

McALLEN — It was the threat of jail time that finally convinced Maria Helena Belasquez to leave the business.

Every election cycle, the 69-year-old prepared for the same routine, aligning herself with candidates, visiting a handful of elderly voters and helping them fill out and deliver their mail-in ballots.

She saw it as a way to make some money while performing a civic service. State and local prosecutors, however, called it a criminal act.

In 2005, Belasquez and seven other politiqueras — operatives paid by campaigns to collect votes — were indicted on charges they mishandled ballots of elderly and disabled voters during their work on the McAllen mayoral race earlier that year.

At the time, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, described the case as yet another reminder that “voter fraud is occurring on a large scale when viewed statewide, and consequently, our state elections are significantly impacted.”

Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra, a Democrat, cautioned local politicians that the indictments should serve as a warning to all those who thought they could get away with tampering with local elections.

But despite the fanfare, nearly all the charges have been dismissed five years later.

What was once trumpeted across the state as one of the premier examples of the “epidemic of voter fraud” plaguing Texas polls evaporated even as debate over the divisive reform measures it helped spawn continues.

In the end, the case had next to no impact on the local politiquera culture. And what’s worse, Abbott’s harshest critics say, it has been used to justify legislation many Democrats view as a veiled effort to suppress minority and elderly voter turnout.

“They saw it as a sweet spot of the Voter ID setup,” said Matt Angle, founder of the left-leaning Lone Star Project, in reference to a failed measure pushed by GOP lawmakers that would have required voters to show a photo ID or two other forms of identification before casting their ballots. “They could point to what sounded on paper like pretty scurrilous stuff.”

CRUMBLING CASE

The case’s last legs finally crumbled beneath it last month, when an Hidalgo County court-at-law judge dismissed charges against its last remaining defendant — a 73-year-old McAllen woman accused of illegally possessing the mail-in ballots of three voters without signing their carrier envelopes to say she assisted them.

But while both Guerra and Abbott aggressively touted the case early on, both have since attempted to distance themselves from it.

Almost immediately after the indictments were handed down, Guerra asked a judge to dismiss charges against the son and namesake of former McAllen Mayor Othal Brand. The younger Brand had been indicted based on a video recording that allegedly showed him offering to pay a politiquero $4,000 in exchange for securing 450 votes for his father.

The district attorney said it was unclear that the junior Brand, who maintained he had recorded the exchange at the direction of investigators, had actually intended to commit any crime.

Then, one-by-one, Guerra’s office withdrew prosecution in nearly all the other cases, citing lack of evidence or the interest of justice.

Belasquez saw her case disappear in August 2008. Others — including sisters and well-known politiqueras Elvira Rios and Alicia Liscano Molina — had their charges dropped that same year with little effort on the part of their attorneys.

The case’s lone conviction came after the politiquero accused of soliciting Othal Brand Jr. — Jose Eliseo Lopez — entered a guilty plea to theft charges stemming from $1,900 he allegedly bilked out of the mayor’s son when he had no intention of delivering any votes.

Lopez said last year that the admission of guilt came without any plea agreement with prosecutors.

“I messed up,” he said. “Othal Brand Jr. had nothing to do with this and I owed it to him to say what I did.”

PLACING BLAME

The problem with all the McAllen voter fraud cases, said Guerra during a recent interview, was that the investigations were weak, pushed on his office by the Texas Rangers and the attorney general and nearly impossible to prove at trial.

Many of the allegations involved politiqueras purportedly pressuring disabled and elderly voters to select certain candidates on their mail-in ballots. But without actually proving the election workers filled out or changed the ballots themselves, it was nearly impossible to convince a jury that criminal activity occurred, the DA said.

“I don’t care what party you’re from, you’re going to have people out hustling votes,” he said. “In some places, they’ll call them politiqueras. In others, they’ll call it paid campaign staff.”

Abbott’s office, however, takes issue with Guerra placing blame in their lap. Investigators from the attorney general’s office were only involved in the probe for five days before Guerra decided their help was no longer needed, said spokesman Jerry Strickland.

“Only Rene Guerra knows … why he dropped indictments that were duly issued by a Hidalgo County grand jury,” he said in an e-mail interview. “At one time, Guerra trumpeted the indictments and expressed concern about the integrity of Hidalgo County elections. Why he changed his mind, declined to consult with the Texas Rangers or this office, and unilaterally dropped the charges, should be directed to Guerra.”

‘WE’LL SIMPLY TOLERATE IT’

The case may have resulted in only one conviction but it still had an effect on the statewide political debate.

State Republicans have pointed to the McAllen case and several other recent voter fraud investigations in the Hidalgo and Starr county areas as justification for divisive measures intended to secure election results across the state.

A vicious debate ensued during the last legislative session, which ended in June, over the proposed Voter ID measure.

Proponents of the legislation maintained it was the only way to prove the person casting a ballot at the polls was the same person listed on voter rolls.

But opponents argued the measure was a thinly veiled effort to suppress voter turnout among minority and elderly groups, who are less likely to have driver’s licenses and more likely to vote Democrat.

However, the bill’s extreme proponents and critics both missed the point, said state Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, who participated in much of last year’s debate as a member of the House Elections Committee. Neither the McAllen mayoral race nor any of the other examples pointed to throughout the discussion involved the type of voter impersonation the Voter ID bill addressed.

“There is in fact voter corruption, but most of it appears in mail ballot voting,” Peña said. “Some people think Voter ID is going to solve these things, but it doesn’t deal with the problem.”

And for that reason, he said, the McAllen politiquera cases were cases worth prosecuting.

“Child molestation cases are difficult to prosecute, too. That doesn’t mean we don’t try,” Peña said. “To maintain confidence in our election system and the voters, we have to try. Otherwise, the message is we’ll simply tolerate it.”

Belasquez, however, said she learned her lesson the first time. Although she was never taken to trial, the 69-year-old said she has sworn off politics for good.

“I’m too old and too sick to deal with all this,” she said. “But it’s not going to stop. There are a lot of people willing to help other people win, and there’s a lot of money to go around.”

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 587-9377.