Election administrator responds to Hidalgo County voter fraud allegations
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In November, Congressman Vincente Gonzalez defeated Republican Candidate Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez in the race for Congressional District 15.
The race showed Gonzalez beat De La Cruz-Hernandez by nearly 6,600 votes.
However, De La Cruz-Hernandez claims that a total of 1,757 ballots were ineligible votes. She provided a list of alleged people who were not registered to vote, but Hidalgo County Elections Administrator Yvonne Ramon confirmed those voters were registered.
Ramon explains that there are three ways people can legally vote without being on voter roll: Provisional voters, voter applications still being verified by the ballot board and limited voters.
"This is a voter that the state of Texas allows to come and vote for all federal and state elections but they must be a registered voter in another county," De La Cruz-Hernandez
According to Ramon, In this election 453 people voted with a limited ballot— signing manually before casting a pending vote.
In a press conference on Tuesday, De La Cruz-Hernandez was also questioning the validity of 2,423 votes casted by mail by people under 65.
"It's very important that our community understand that not only can the 65 and older vote by mail but our disabled too and not all disabled are 65 or older," Ramon said.
De La Cruz-Hernandez said her team reviewed voter rolls that list the people who are eligible to vote and compared it to a list of people who voted in early voting, election day and mail-in ballots. They found that out of eight counties that make up District 15, in Hidalgo County there 944 voters not on the voter roll and in Guadalupe County there were 813.
De La Cruz-Hernandez is also arguing that mail in ballot sent to registered voters over ages 65 by Hidalgo County's Election Department as approved by the commissioner's court was illegal.
Ramon said to date they have not had any federal or state agencies conduct an investigation on their operations.
"I would be the first one to initiate an investigation if there was proof of not alleged fraud, but proof," Ramon said.
De La Cruz-Hernandez's campaign couldn't provide a single example of a person who cast a ballot in the election but wasn't registered to vote.
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Correction: This story misstated the amount of votes Gonzalez received to win the race against De la Cruz-Hernandez. The correct number was nearly 6,600 not 30,000.