Two Rio Grande Valley “politiqueras” were questioned by the FBI after they were recruited by candidates to pay people to vote…

Two alleged “politiqueras,” Guadalupe Escamilla and Rebecca Gonzalez, were arrested after an FBI investigation determined they were paying voters money, food, and cigarettes for their votes.

The investigation alleges that the two worked as “politiqueras” during the 2012 primary election and the general election.

The Monitor reports on the latest voter fraud allegations in the Rio Grande Valley made by two Democrats battling for a seat on the Weslaco City Commission, including “obvious illegal registration,” votes “cast by individuals who were not eligible to vote in District 5 because they do not reside in District 5,” and mail-in ballot fraud.

“These pervasive illegalities in ballots voted by mail are the result of a concerted effort by Contestee Rivera’s campaign to encourage voters to seek ballot by mail applications, some of which were fraudulently submitted on behalf of voters not eligible … or even completing ballots without direction from the voters,” the suit says. “The ballot by mail scheme allowed the Rivera campaign to exercise undue influence on such voters in a manner that would not be possible, or at least would be harder to achieve, if the voter were to vote in person.”

Residency for voting purposes continues to be a thorny issue: 

Lopez’s attorney Jerad Najvar acknowledged the murkiness of trying to prove residency and the difficulties that would likely come with both sides trying to challenge the true home of so many people.  “I think we’ll establish that these people weren’t residents… There will be a lot more votes, I think, that will prove to be invalid.”

It is also the sort of behavior which ended during the Bush years. What is notable about the termination of the behind the scenes collusion is how entitled the left felt about the practice. The termination of this collusion from 2001-2009 led the left to go wild in attacking the Bush DOJ, often dishonestly. as Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan did in a Duke Law journal. . . .

Eric Holder’s action against North Carolina is a purely political move. It is designed to alter the outcome of the 2014 midterm elections, nothing more and nothing less. It accomplishes this goal two ways. First, by mobilizing the far left base of his party. Obama knows that in 2014, as they were in 2012, elections are won with a mobilized base turned out by cutting edge data tools, not by compromise and running to the middle. Attacking Voter ID mobilizes the base. Second, knocking down election integrity measures makes it more likely illegal votes will aid North Carolina democrats in the 2014 midterm elections.

Holder is also trying to place North Carolina back under oversight, something his Democrat friends and one Republican friend in Congress are also attempting to do.

As usual, with this administration, the North Carolina attack on voter ID is all about power. Holder lost it. Holder wants it back.”

The new boundaries, drawn in 2011 by a Republican-majority Legislature, were previously pre-cleared by the Justice Department at the request of the state’s Attorney General.

“In the majority decision, U.S. Circuit Judge Bill Pryor rejected the claim about diluting black voter strength and wrote that ‘the overwhelming evidence in the record suggests that black voters will have an equal opportunity to participate in the political process the same as everyone else.’ He was joined by U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins.”