What New Election Administrator Must Do to Break Election Fraud Cycle

Ernie Hernandez

Even with Roger Ortiz riding off into the proverbial sunset, the obvious, massive voter fraud practiced and prevalent in Cameron County will not automatically disappear.  Ortiz leaves behind within the county electoral process a corrupt system that includes handpicked election judges, poll workers and ballot caretakers who knowingly, willingly cooperate with politiqueras.  It is a system MOST of the elected public officials in Cameron County have utilized including the county judge and county sheriff.

The candidates for Election Administrator will be considered by the  Cameron County Election Commission at 8:30 AM in the Commissioner Court Room in the Dancy Building.  Jules Frapart, Chris Davis, Lucia Garcia, Charley Kidder, Juan Ortiz, Rolando Tamayo, Robert Mendoza and Tad Hasse have submitted applications for the position.

No one could ever convince me that Ortiz was arithmetic-challenged.  Roger himself told me he once worked with tax assessment, where columns of figures have to match up and business inventory factors into taxes owed.  Prior to assuming the supervision of local elections, Ortiz was overseer of a janitorial crew.  Waxes, cleaners and mop heads had to be ordered.  Employees had to be scheduled and paid, all numbers-associated skills.

Election Judge Arcelia Villalon
Conferring with Gomez Campaign
During Polling Hours

While Roger made vote counting seem difficult, mind-numbing, nearly impossible to achieve accurately, the actual arithmetic is grade school level, needing only a careful system of simple checks and balances.  The number of voters should equal the number of votes.  The number of Republican voters added to the Democratic voters should equal both counts.  All precincts should be checked off and accounted for.   Republican and Democratic vote totals in each precinct have to match the total votes for that precinct.  There are so many ways to check, cross check and check again to avoid embarrassing and confidence-killing recounts.

While Cameron County vote totals have lacked accuracy, they have also been among the slowest to be released.  The system of securely picking up ballot boxes and expediting them to the Election Office has to be refined.  We don't need a kid with an unsecured ballot box stopping to shop at H.E.B. before delivering his critical cargo.  Perhaps the underutilized constables can be involved in this pickup, signing for sealed boxes at each polling place and delivering them to the office.

Linda Dragustinovis

The way election judges are chosen and trained needs to be re-examined.  Acting Democratic Party Chair Jared Hockema selected Los Fresnos resident Linda Dragustinovis as Election Judge at Benevides Elementary despite her P.A.C., Bringing Brownsville Change receiving contributions from Carlos Masso and her close association with the Erin H. Garcia campaign.  Arcelia Villalon, the Cameron Park Election Judge was seen openly cavorting with members of the Abelardo Gomez campaign during polling hours.  Disturbing reports came out of the Christ the King polling place with respect to poll watchers being ignored and disrespected when they tried to report violations.

The new Election Administrator will also need a pro-active stance with regard to educating the management and staff at adult day care and nursing facilities and the city high-rise for the elderly.  Issues of liability and improper transport of the elderly, infirm and mentally-challenged need to be addressed as well as proper handling of such voters, if indeed delivered to the polling place.  A minivan is not a polling facility.  The proper handling of mail-in ballots and mail-in ballot applications has to be uniformly addresssed.  When the election code allows a candidate to pick up 25 ballot applications, a non-candidate 10, why in the hell does the Cameron County Elections Office allow an unlimited number of applications to be xeroxed or handwritten?

The hiring process beginning Monday for a new Election Administrator will be critical to preserving or possibly reinstating the democratic process in Cameron County, but the implementation of safeguards is even more critical.