Election freud

PHOENIX (AP) — A southwestern Arizona woman who pleaded guilty to illegally collecting four early voting ballots in the 2020 primary election was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation on Thursday, with the judge rejecting her plea for just probation and saying he did not think she accepts responsibility for her criminal act.

The sentence for Guillermina Fuentes, a 66-year-old school board member and former mayor of the small border city of San Luis, caps a lengthy case that caught the eye of investigators on the day of the August 2020 primary and eventually led to charges against Fuentes and another San Luis woman. Republicans who question former President Donald Trump’s loss in Arizona and other battleground states seized on the case as evidence of widespread voter fraud, even though it came in the primary and is the sole case of “ballot harvesting” ever prosecuted in the state.

Yuma County Superior Court Judge Roger Nelson told Fuentes that despite a parade of character witnesses and a probation officer who wrote a pre-sentence report saying in court last week that she was remorseful, Nelson said he didn’t believe it, and then quoted from the report. ″'The defendant acknowledged responsibility for carrying ballots for someone else however, she stated, ‘I’m not a criminal,” Nelson read.

“Well, you are a criminal,” Nelson told her. “You committed a criminal offense. I don’t think you recognize that as a criminal offense. That’s the problem that I have.” Prosecutors from the Arizona attorney general’s office had sought a year in prison for violating a 2016 “ballot harvesting” law that makes it illegal to possess someone else’s mail ballots unless they are a family member, housemate or caregiver to the voter.

www.kold.com/2022/10/14/arizona-woman-gets-30-days-jail-collecting-4-ballots