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McALLEN — Filomena Leo began to weep this week as she reminisced about her late husband William “Billy” Leo and how he would encourage their neighbors to vote.
Billy Leo, who died in 2018, was at one point mayor of La Joya, a Rio Grande Valley city of about 4,600 people, and Hidalgo County clerk — among several other public roles he held in South Texas.
As a politician and civic leader, he also was influential in popularizing the focus on absentee voter turnout in local races here.
To help increase voter turnout starting in the mid-1980s, he hired campaign workers to engage elderly residents and help them vote by mail. Such campaign workers came to be known locally as “politiqueras,” though Leo moved away from the term when it became associated with unscrupulous strategies such as paying for votes, his wife said.
“He did not like that at all,” Leo said. “He was very clear with those that helped him get the vote out — yes, he would pay them for their day, but never, never to offer voters pay for their casting a vote.”
The mobilization of campaign workers to assist elderly and disabled voters has been criticized locally and throughout the state in recent years, becoming the target of crackdowns by state lawmakers who have enacted tighter restrictions on voting by mail.
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Texas Latino leaders label voter fraud investigation “nonsense,” call for federal, state reviews
At a news conference, Texas House candidate Cecilia Castellano did not address any of the allegations Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office laid out in search warrant affidavits.
Inspired in large part by the unverified claims of voter fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies following the 2020 election, the Texas legislature enacted one of the largest rewrites of election laws.
Known as Senate Bill 1, it barred local election officials from sending unsolicited applications to request a mail-in ballot, even to people who automatically qualify to vote by mail. The law also established new rules for assisting voters with mail-in ballots, requiring the assisting person to fill out paperwork disclosing their relationship to the voter.
Last week, Texas authorities searched the homes of at least six Latinos as part of an ongoing “election integrity investigation” launched by Attorney General Ken Paxton.
In their search, authorities seized cellphones amid allegations that a longtime Frio County political operator had illegally harvested votes for multiple local races in recent years, according to court records obtained by The Texas Tribune. Vote harvesting is the act of collecting completed mail-in ballots from a wide swath of people.
Among the targets of the search were Cecilia Castellano, a Democratic candidate for the Texas House, and Manuel Medina, a former chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party and chief of staff to state Rep. Liz Campos, D-San Antonio. They and the campaign workers whose homes were raided deny any wrongdoing.
News of the raids went viral, especially after one of the nation’s leading Latino advocacy organizations accused Paxton of intimidating voters in an attempt to sway an upcoming state House race for Republicans.
Allegations of voter harvesting conducted by politiqueras often surface after elections in the Valley which has seen its fair number of heated election contests.
In 2018, the city of Mission, which abuts McAllen to the west, was embroiled in a legal dispute over the results of an election, a dispute that pitted former Mayor Norberto “Beto” Salinas against then-Mayor Armando “Doc” O’Caña.
Salinas accused O’Caña’s campaign of bribery, illegal voting, and tampering with mail-in ballots during a runoff election that had unseated Salinas after 20 years as mayor.
After nearly two weeks of testimony, the judge presiding over the trial ruled the election invalid. However, a re-do election was never held because the 13th Court of Appeals reversed the decision, allowing O’Caña to remain mayor.
Rick Salinas, a Mission attorney who represented Beto Salinas, his father, in the election contest, blames ballot harvesting for what he views as the decay of the local political scene.
“A large number of the people that are holding public office right now, they are the product of these politiqueras and this underground movement that has existed for a long time,” Salinas said.
Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas Democratic Party chair who represented O’Caña in the 2018 election contest, argues there was no evidence of ballot harvesting in the O’Caña case.
Salinas and Hinojosa are again locked in a dispute centered around another court trial related to the issue of assisting voters at polling sites.
Hinojosa said he believes vote harvesting has occurred in the Valley and in other parts of Texas. However, he said, Republicans only investigate alleged election fraud in Latino and Democratic strongholds like the Rio Grande Valley.
“What Paxton has done is misuse his office to intimidate normally Democratic voters from participating in the process,” Hinojosa said.
The difference between helping elderly voters in a systematic way to drive turnout and breaking the law can be a thin line, especially as the law has changed in recent years, election observers say. What may be illegal now might have just been normal practice a few years ago, said Alvaro Corral, a political scientist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
“I think it’s a shift in perception,” he said. “This can’t be disentangled from the broader post-2020 crackdown on, just generally, access to the ballot in Texas.”
And the attorney general’s investigation, he added, could have a chilling effect on voter engagement efforts in Latino communities.
“My sense,” Corral said, “is that election officials are increasingly hesitant to just provide basic language assistance for folks post SB 1 in Texas.”
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
Voting FAQ: 2024 Elections
When is the next election? What dates do I need to know?
Election Day for the general election is November 5, and early voting will run from Oct. 21 to Nov. 1. The deadline to register to vote and/or change your voter registration address is Oct. 7. Applications to vote by mail must be received by your county of residence – not postmarked – by Oct. 25.
What’s on the ballot for the general election?
In addition to the president, eligible Texans have the opportunity to cast their ballots for many Texas officials running for office at the federal, state and local levels.
This includes representatives in the U.S. and Texas houses and the following elected offices:
-1 U.S Senator (Ted Cruz)
– 1 of 3 Railroad Commissioners
– 15 State Senators
– 7 State Board of Education members
– 3 members of the Texas Supreme Court
– 3 members of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
– 5 Chief Justices and various justices for Texas Courts of Appeals
Lower-level judges and local county offices will also appear on the ballot:
– Various district judges, including on criminal and family courts
– County Courts at Law
– Justices of the Peace
– District Attorneys
– County Attorneys
– Sheriffs
– Constables
– Tax Assessor-Collectors
How do I make sure I’m registered to vote?
You can check to see if you’re registered and verify your information through the Texas Secretary of State’s website. You’ll need one of the following three combinations to log in: Your Texas driver’s license number and date of birth. Your first and last names, date of birth and county you reside in. Your date of birth and Voter Unique Identifier, which appears on your voter registration certificate.
What if I missed the voter registration deadline?
You must be registered to vote in a Texas county by Oct. 7 to vote in the Nov. 5 presidential election. You can still register for other elections.
If you’re registered but didn’t update your address by the deadline, you may still be able to vote at your previous voting location or on a limited ballot. (Voters are typically assigned precincts based on where they live. In most major counties, voters can vote anywhere on Election Day, but some counties require you vote within your precinct. If that is the case, you may have to return to your previous precinct. See which counties allow countywide Election Day voting here. You can usually find your precinct listed on your voter registration certificate or on when checking your registration online.)
If you moved from one county to another, you may be able to vote on a ballot limited to the elections you would qualify to vote in at both locations, such as statewide races. However, limited ballots are only available during early voting. Find your county election official here and contact them to ask about or request a limited ballot.
What can I do if I have questions about voting?
You can contact your county elections official or call the Texas Secretary of State’s helpline at 1-800-252-VOTE (8683). A coalition of voting rights groups is also helping voters navigate election concerns through the 866-OUR-VOTE (687-8683) voter-protection helpline. The coalition also has hotlines available for voters who speaker other languages or have accessibility needs.
For help in Spanish, call 888-VE-Y-VOTA or 888-839-8682.
For help in Asian languages, call 888-API-VOTE or 888-274-8683.
For help in Arabic, call 888-YALLA-US or 888-925-5287.
For help in American Sign Language through a video, call 301-818-VOTE or 301-818-8683.
For help from Disability Rights Texas, call 888-796-VOTE or 888-796-8683.
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