Out-of-town ballots in La Joya ISD election raise concern

EDINBURG — County elections administrators have uncovered a handful of questionable ballots cast in the La Joya school board election earlier this month.

But it is too soon to tell whether the flagged ballots indicate a concerted effort to rig the May 12 vote, elections chief Teresa Navarro said.

While voters with registered addresses in Edinburg, Donna and Weslaco cast votes in the race, Navarro said, the number of suspect ballots found so far would not change the overall outcome of the election.

“We have found a few names on the list of persons that do not live within (the district) precincts,” she said. “But it’s going to take us a while to go through this and see what this means.”

The race, one of western Hidalgo County’s most contentious in decades, led to another term on the board for Arturo Gonzalez and ousted Elma Garza, who was replaced with Gonzalez ally Esperanza “Espie” Ochoa.

Since the vote, both sides have filed complaints of election improprieties.

The protests prompted District Attorney Rene Guerra to seize all election documents from the school district on Wednesday for a possible criminal investigation.

Since then, Navarro and her staff have been poring over voter rolls to find possible discrepancies, a process that is expected to take several weeks to complete.

Although administrators have already discovered a few ballots from people not registered in the La Joya school district boundaries, some of these voters may simply have forgotten to register their new addresses after moving within the district’s borders, Navarro said.

In such cases, poll workers should provide these voters with provisional ballots, which can be checked and counted in the event of a tight election. Both Gonzalez and Ochoa won their races by a margin of more than 300 votes.

Navarro’s staff has already found a few cases where this procedure was not followed but has not finished checking all of the dubious votes against the provisional voter lists.

So far, the elections office has only completed its review of one of the district’s polling locations, she said.

Around 140 provisional votes were cast in the La Joya school district races — a number that Navarro characterized as “unusually high” but stopped short of calling suspicious.

Only 16 such ballots were cast in this year’s county-wide elections, she said.

“It is not unusual to find provisional ballots from someone who shows up to vote in the wrong precinct,” she said.

“It is unusual to find someone who resides in a whole other district. (Election judges) have to check that.”

Guerra refused to comment on the irregularities, saying it would be improper to assume anything before the investigation was complete.

The La Joya school board elections have been contentious from the start.

An attorney for the losing candidates in the race is expected to go before a state district court today and hear whether the judge will allow videotaped depositions from 15 people who allegedly witnessed criminal conduct that occurred during the election.

The attorney — former Hidalgo County Judge Ramon Garcia — represents losing candidates Garza and her slate-mate, Mingo Villarreal.

Garcia described the sworn statements as a preliminary step to a possible lawsuit on behalf of his clients.

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Jeremy Roebuck covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437. For this and more local stories, visit www.themonitor.com.