Amid Pols' Claims Of Rampant Voter Fraud, Mexican Woman Draws 8-Year Prison Sentence In Texas

AUSTIN, TX — In a recent news release, the state's attorney general boasted of having personally obtained a voter fraud conviction against a Mexican national in North Texas, positing the case as part of a broader effort to combat voter fraud.

“This case shows how serious Texas is about keeping its elections secure, and the outcome sends a message that violators of the state’s election law will be prosecuted to the fullest,” Attorney General Paxton said in a prepared statement.

Paxton said Grand Prairie, Texas, Rosa Maria Ortega, 37, was found to have falsely claimed U.S. citizenship on a voter registration form in Dallas County before casting ballots five times between 2004 and 2014.

"Evidence was presented showing that she attempted to register in Tarrant County, but election officials rejected her application after she admitted she was a non-citizen," Paxton's statement reads.

But the case has yielded much skepticism as to its motive, and the steep punishment — eight years in prison with a $5,000 fine — is raising a fair amount of eyebrows as disproportionate to the transgression.

"It's clear this is not the blockbuster case they need to make in proving voter fraud," University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus told Patch in a telephone interview. "They would need pockets of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, involved in this illegal activity and a specific leader or organization to claim there is a significant amount of voter fraud. This is not it."

What's more, the woman targeted by Paxton told media outlets she believed she was able to vote legally, rendering the case more one rooted in voter confusion than fraud, the professor said: "This is not consistent with general patterns of what people call voter fraud. This was more in the realm of voter confusion than it was voter fraud."

Led by Gov. Greg Abbott, conservative lawmakers in Texas and elsewhere have long claimed rampant voter fraud even while subsequent investigations have found examples of voter cheating to be negligible. By some reckoning, it's likelier to be struck by lightning in Texas than it is to find a case of voter fraud.

The imagined scourge has been given new life in Texas with the rise of Donald Trump, who has taken umbrage with the reality that Hillary Clinton secured some 3 million more ballots than he in the popular vote in the November election, although he managed to win the Electoral College.

Trump vowed to launch in investigation that has yet to materialize, claiming, sans evidence, that 3 million to 5 million illegal votes were cast to benefit Clinton. After making such claims last month, that promised investigation has yet to materialize.

The Ortega case also doesn't fit the narrative of undocumented immigrants illegally casting ballots to benefit the Democratic Party as conservative politicians have long inferred. Ortega registered as a Republican, voting for Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. Ironically, she voted two years later for Paxton when he ran for attorney general.

In his Feb. 9 statement, Paxton leaves out the part about Ortega identifying herself as a Republican and having voted as such.

A mother of four (her children range in age from 13 to 16) who was brought into this country as an infant, Ortega has a sixth-grade education, according to her lawyer. In a New York Times account, he paints a less nefarious motive than the one painted by Paxton.

While acknowledging the illegality of her 2012 and 2014 votes in Dallas County, he maintains the woman never meant to break the law. Some government forms allow applicants to declare permanent residency status, but the voting application in neighboring Tarrant County where Ortega subsequently moved had not such option to check off. Lacking the option, she ticked the "citizen" box.

And that's when her life began to unravel. A permanent resident with a green card, she is now cast as the antagonist of a narrative Texas GOP members have long tried to advance. In justifying their stringent Voter ID law — struck down as unconstitutional for its discriminatory effect on minority voters — the same narrative of combating voter fraud has been used.

"She wasn’t trying to topple the country,” her attorney told the Times. “She was trying to make more serious decisions about our country than the 50 percent of the people who didn’t bother to vote in the last election. This country is so inflamed by this Donald Trump nonsense that they’ve turned her into a whipping boy."

And with an accompanying harsh punishment he and others view as disproportionate the the crime. By comparison, a woman in Tarrant County — a former Democratic Precinct Chair candidate — got probation after it was found she directed her son to cast votes on behalf of his father.

The harsh sentence to what has emerged as more a case of voter confusion than an effort to intentionally defraud has drawn criticism from even hard-line Republicans, including conservative political pundit Bill Kristol:

"I'm a law & order person and support voter ID," Kristol recently tweeted. "But this sentence is nuts, & it's unseemly for the Texas governor to be chest-beating about it."

Rottinghaus agreed other forces were in play in going after the woman and handing down the stiff sentence. Even after the controversial Texas Voter ID law was ruled to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act, Paxton continues to lead efforts to resurrect it.

Rottinghaus believes the case against Ortega was used as a pawn toward achieving that aim. And with Trump now leading the charge in claiming widespread voter fraud, her fate was sealed.

"In a way, they have been looking for political cover from higher up, and the president gave them that."

For Ortega, that means a grim future: "She’ll do eight years in a Texas prison and then she'll be deported, and wake up blinking and scratching in a country she doesn't know," her attorney, Clark Birdsall, told the Times.

Gov. Abbott joined subsequently joined in the celebratory tone over the woman's conviction, re-tweeting a story by Fox News featuring a booking photo of the mother of four as prominently displayed as when his attorney general issues press releases about busting suspects found to have amassed images of child pornography and similar crimes.

"In Texas you will pay a price for Voter Fraud: Noncitizen Sentenced to 8 Years in prison for Illegal Voting. #txlege," Abbott writes in stern language in a makeshift headline to his re-tweet.

Abbott has made cracking down on undocumented immigrants an "emergency item" of his agenda, working aggressively to ban so-called "sanctuary cities" he view as being too soft on enforcing immigration policy at the local level. He's locked horns with Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez given her more nuanced law enforcement approach that focuses on high-level offenders targeted for deportation.

The governor won't have it. Instead, he's called for across-the-board deportations of all undocumented immigrants from Texas, whether or not they have criminal records. He's currently championing Senate Bill 4 that would assess fines and even jail times for law enforcement officials not obeying his directives, has cut $1.5 million in Travis County funds in retaliation for the sheriff's stance and has stated he'll explore crafting legislation that would allow him to remove duly elected officials not falling in lockstep from office.

For Abbott, there is no nuance to immigration enforcement in Texas, no allowances for the motivations behind migration in searching for better opportunities or escaping violence or political upheaval by membes of the diaspora. While grasping the political Abbott's political calculations in appealing to his base that fuels Abbott's resolve, critics often point to the incongruous nature of his own family history rooted in migration: The governor has been married to Cecilia Abbott, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and the First Lady of Texas, for more than three decades.

But there is no gray area to Abbott's black-and-white stance, no room for ambiguity and no allowance for nuance. Given the current political climate that has fueled the anti-immigration political posturing and the attendant tough talk from conservative politicians, Ortega never had a chance.

In helping try the case against Ortega, Paxton painted his efforts as victory in ensuring the sanctity of the voting process: “Safeguarding the integrity of our elections is essential to preserving our democracy,” he wrote in his statement announcing the woman's conviction.

Ironically, Paxton himself has been targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission as regulators aim to safeguard the integrity of the financial securities industry. He's set to go to trial soon on state securities fraud charges after government regulators said he recruited investors for a technology firm without disclosing he was being paid by the company to solicit their money as required by law.

Like Ortega, Paxton has denied wrongdoing. For Ortega, recent developments has thrust her life into uncertainty and in tatters. For Paxton, it would appear, it was just another day at the office.

>>> Official photo of Ken Paxton via State of Texas