Turning themselves into the Bandera County Sheriff’s Office, the charges stem from fraudulent voting practices during the 2018 primary in Medina County.
Tomas Ramirez, the peace officer, has been charged along with Leonor Garza, Eva Martinez, and Mary Balderrama by a Bandera County grand jury.
The charges range from engaging in organized election fraud to illegal voting to unlawfully assisting a mail ballot voter.
Ramirez et al. aren’t the first individuals charged with voter fraud in the recent past. A number of voter fraud charges have been brought by the OAG’s Election Integrity Unit including against a San Antonio woman exposed by an undercover Project Veritas video back in October.
The Bandera County Sheriff’s Office informed The Texan each defendant was released on personal recognizance bond.
Attorney General Ken Paxton stated about the arrests, “Voter fraud is real [and] is an attack on the integrity of our elections. The left tries to gaslight Americans into believing it doesn’t exist and isn’t bad. My office will continue to lead the way in protecting our elections by rigorously investigating [and] prosecuting all voter fraud.”
The defendants are being tried in Bandera County because under Texas law, any voter fraud-related offense may be tried in a neighboring county.
The OAG website states the office has successfully prosecuted 531 counts of voter fraud since 2004 — with 97 of them from 2018 alone.
Currently, 234 election fraud investigations are still active.
Debate over voter fraud, especially involving mail ballots, crescendoed during the 2020 election.
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Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson is a senior reporter for The Texan and an Ohio native who graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2017. He is an avid sports fan who most enjoys watching his favorite teams continue their title drought throughout his cognizant lifetime. In his free time, you may find Brad quoting Monty Python productions and trying to calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
