According to Citizens Against Voter Abuse (CAVA) President, Mary Helen Flores:

“The pattern is for the politiqueras, which is a person paid by candidates, to go and specifically take votes from people, the mail in votes, they go and they pick up the mail in ballots from people who live in assisted living centers, the nursing homes. They take their ballots, fill them out for them and then mail it and those votes are not valid votes, they’re stealing votes and so it ruins the authenticity of all our elections,” says Flores.

The watchdog group is asking residents to stand up and help put a stop to this illegal activity… A member of the group has put up a $5,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of any person committing voter fraud here in our county.  “There is a lack of enforcement, a lack of redress from the state level on down with regards to how the mail in system works,” says Flores.

CAVA isn’t the only group concerned with mail-in ballot fraud.  Investigative journalists at Texas Watchdog have reported extensively on the persistent problem of vote harvesting, including a Dec 2010 story of politiquera Dora Gonzalez who confessed to illegally harvesting 100+ ballots on behalf of a Val Verde County Commissioner in the March 2010 Democrat primary.  A judge ordered a new election, but Gonzalez wasn’t charged.  Most perpetrators aren’t, as prosecutors say “the penalties are so small they don’t deter the crime.”

TW also interviewed politiquera Zaida Bueno about her vote harvesting activities, for which she and two others received “a year of probation, a 180-day suspended jail sentence, a $200 fine and 40 hours of community work.”  Bueno claimed she didn’t know vote harvesting was illegal.  “After all, it was the candidates themselves who were giving her the instructions, she said.”   

Along with minimal risk of punishment is the potential for big rewards.  Starr County election administrator Rafael Montalvo testified to the state legislature’s Elections Committee in 2008 that sometimes politiqueras receive $10 per voter and can make good money during an election period – as much as $30,000 a season, by some estimates.  So will the threat of reward-motivated informing to authorities deter these professional fraudsters?

What about legislative action to deter mail-in ballot fraud?  Again via TW, “Without a doubt we have a problem,” said state rep. Aaron Pena, whose district includes most of Hidalgo County in South Texas. Over his four victorious campaigns, he’s been approached by vote harvesters, or politiqueros, with promises of vote delivery.  When he refused, he said he was told he was courting ‘political trouble’ and making himself a target.”    But so far most Texas legislators have been hesitant to propose substantive changes to secure mail-in balloting.  Perhaps in its next session, Texas will consider the recommendations of the American Civil Rights Union’s “Protect Your Vote!” project, as already implemented in Kansas’ SAFE Act, and pass legislation requiring signature verification and an acceptable proof of ID when voting by mail – just as soon as they finish litigating their in-person photo Voter ID law.

So what crimes may have the New Black Panthers committed in Florida with their threats toward George Zimmerman?

Let’s start with solicitation to kidnap.”

But a $10,000 bounty. And the New Black Panther Party, don’t forget, is the group that intimidated voters in 2008 in Philadelphia and a number of other places, and lawsuits were filed against them for voter intimidation and the Obama Justice Department (the attorney general, Eric Holder) just threw the investigation out. He just brought it to screeching halt.”