The dominoes are beginning to fall…
Monica Mendez of Port Lavaca, TX, who ran a ballot harvesting operation on behalf of a subsidized housing corporation, has pleaded guilty to 26 felony counts of voter fraud. The charges include 3 counts of illegal voting, 8 counts of election fraud, 7 counts of assisting a voter to submit a ballot by mail, and 8 counts of unlawful possession of a mail ballot.
“Mendez ran a vote-harvesting operation on behalf of a subsidized housing corporation in order to influence the outcome of a utility board election,” TX AG Paxton said of Mendez’s conviction that was investigated and prosecuted by the Election Integrity team in cooperation with the Victoria Co. District Attorney’s office.
The charges stem from a May 2018 Bloomington water board election involving eight voters’ ballots.
Victoria County Elections Administrator Margetta Hill said in June 2021 Mendez worked as a volunteer deputy registrar during the 2018 water board election in Bloomington.
As a volunteer deputy registrar, Mendez would have been responsible for helping residents register to vote, Hill said. After local officials were notified that the attorney general’s office was investigating Mendez’s conduct in 2018, Mendez’s registrar certification was not renewed.
“Once we get wind of something that’s not right, we have the right to revoke her certificate,” Hill said in 2021. “We didn’t renew it.
Bloomington’s water board election came under scrutiny in 2018 after about 275 people in the rural town of 2,500 registered to vote using the same mailing address. The mailing address was a post office box associated with rental properties linked to ALMS, a local housing nonprofit accused of unfairly trying to win votes during that election.
AG Paxton’s office reports – After Mendez entered a guilty plea on all 26 counts and confirmed in court that all counts could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, District Judge Eli Garza sentenced Mendez to five years of deferred adjudication probation.
Read a copy of the indictment here:
