Abbott’s Shining Example Of A Voter Fraud Prosecution Goes Down The Toilet

Remember back in 2006 and 2007 when Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott was crowing about a bunch of “voter fraud” indictments in Hidalgo and Starr Counties?

It appears, now that the majority of those cases have been dismissed, that the AG has little or nothing to crow about:

Criminal charges against two politiqueras accused of tampering with ballots in the 2005 McAllen mayoral election were dropped Tuesday, the same day their case was scheduled to go to trial.

Hidalgo County Court-at-law Judge Jaime Palacios dismissed the case against Maria Helena Belasquez and Alicia Liscano Molina at the request of prosecutors who did not feel they had enough evidence to convince a jury of wrongdoing.

The decision comes five days after a similar case was dismissed against another politiquera, Gloria Barajas.

Most amusing about this situation is that the local District Attorney, left to prosecute the case in the wake of Abbott’s swoop-in-and-indict-them episode, has no problem throwing Abbott under the bus and telling the world what he thinks of the prosecutions:

“They were not our investigations, and I didn’t feel they would stand up before a jury,” Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra said.

[...]

In this case, the investigation was conducted by the Texas attorney general’s office but did not produce specific evidence linking the women to any crime, Guerra said.

[...]

“There’s a very high standard of proof required by jurors (in voter fraud cases),” he said. “You can’t just show evidence of irregularities. You have to show that the defendant was responsible.”

This, after Abbott held up these prosecutions as a shining star:

In 2006, Attorney General Greg Abbott held up the Hidalgo County voter fraud case as an example of a successful voter fraud investigation that produced results.

And the Texas AG’s office has spent how much on these prosecutions, 99 percent of which lead nowhere?

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