Ballot Harvesting Scheme Caught on Video Leads to Convictions, Jail Time for Former Mayor

In a surprising turn of events, the former mayor of San Luis pled guilty to ballot fraud and was subsequently sent to jail after she was videotaped illegally collecting and filling out ballots right there outside a polling location during the 2020 election cycle. But this story has a bit of a twist because even more surprising than the former mayor going to jail for ballot fraud is what happened to the political careers of the several women who are implicated in this San Luis ballot fraud operation. And so let's go through it together. To start with, this woman right here is Ms. Guisarmina Fuentes. She used to be the mayor of a town right there on the U.S.-Mexico border called San Luis. It's located in Yuma County, Arizona. And according to this report that you can see up on your screen, it was written by the state attorney general's office, what happened was that an investigation was opened into Ms. Fuentes after someone happened to record a video of her collecting as well as filling out ballots at a table right outside of a polling place during the 2020 municipal primary elections. Now for your reference, this video was taken by was at that time a Republican candidate running for city council. And when he was sitting in his car and he saw what was happening at the polling site, he took out his phone and recorded the entire thing. I'll play for you a small part of that video. Now, this video doesn't actually have any audio to it. And so as you're watching it, I'll read to you the report from the attorney general's office, which describes what's taking place. Quote, a group of subjects led by Guisarmina Fuentes were seen on video manning a table and appearing to be supporting particular candidates. A female identified as Alma Juarez approached the table and made contact with a second female identified as Guisarmina Fuentes. Fuentes is ultimately observed taking a ballot from Juarez. In the video, it is clear that the ballot envelope was unsealed. Fuentes was observed to pick up a pen or a pencil and write on the ballot envelope. She then pulls the ballot out of the envelope and makes three marks consistent with the filling in of spaces on a ballot to make a candidate selection. Fuentes put the ballot back in the envelope and sealed it. She then retrieved several more ballot envelopes from a folder on the table and handed them to Juarez. Juarez then walked toward the polling location. Investigators also mentioned in their report that Ms. Fuentes was using her position within the San Luis community to persuade local voters to allow either her or her acquaintances to deposit ballots on their behalf. And just in case you're wondering, within the state of Arizona, this practice is indeed illegal because according to Arizona's anti-ballot harvesting law, it is a felony for anyone to turn in the early ballots of other people unless those other people happen to be family members, household members, or caregivers. Outside of these three exceptions, ballot harvesting is outright illegal. And so after this video emerged and the subsequent investigation was conducted and completed, Ms. Fuentes, alongside her associate Ms. Alma Juarez, the other woman in that videotape, both of them were charged with one count each of ballot abuse, a charge that I should mention both women wound up pleading guilty to. And eventually the women were handed down their punishments. Ms. Guisarmina Fuentes was sentenced to 30 days in jail as well as two years of supervised probation, while her accomplice Ms. Alma Juarez was given no jail time and only sentenced to one year of probation. However, this was not the end of the story because shortly after these two women were given their sentences, another development occurred within the city of San Luis. The Arizona Attorney General's office, they made an announcement saying that another pair of women were also indicted in a Yuma County ballot harvesting scheme. Specifically, these two women were Gloria Lopez Torres, who was a longtime member of the city council, as well as Ms. Nadia Guadalupe Lizarraga Mallorcan, also she goes by the name of Nadia Buchanan. Both of these two women were charged with two class six felonies, one for conspiracy and the other for ballot abuse. Here is specifically what a statement from the Attorney General's office said when announcing these indictments, quote, Attorney General Mark Brunovich announced that Gloria Lopez Torres of San Luis and Nadia Guadalupe Lizarraga Mallorcan of San Luis, also known as Nadia Buchanan, have been charged by the state grand jury with conspiracy and ballot abuse arising from alleged ballot harvesting scheme where early ballots from other voters were collected and deposited into a ballot box on primary election day, August 4th, 2020. The city of San Luis held municipal elections on that date. And what's really interesting to note here is that when you look into the details of this state level investigation, it actually sheds quite a bit of light into what was truly happening behind the scenes, meaning it sheds light on how these alleged ballot harvesting schemes were actually playing themselves out at the ground level. And so to give you a bit of background here, as well as the general scale of this whole ballot harvesting operation, here's an excerpt from a report that was published in the Arizona Daily Independent newspaper, quote, news of the indictment of Councilwoman Torres, who also serves as membership coordinator for a San Luis Back in May, Torres' cell phone was seized as part of a court-approved search warrant that also allowed for Torres' home to be searched. At the time when the cell phone was seized, Torres' boss at the property management company publicly criticized Attorney General Mark Brunovich for his handling of the investigation. That boss, Marco Tony Reyes, is also the chairman of Yuma County's board of supervisors. And so just to pause here for a quick moment, you can already begin to see how just well connected this woman actually is. Because not only is she a member of the city council, not only is she a member of the local school board, but also her boss at the company that she works for also happens to be the chairman of the Yuma County board of supervisors. Regardless, the report continues by describing the method of their investigation, as well as exactly how this alleged ballot harvesting operation was taking place. Quote, but Councilwoman Torres had been a focus of Special Agent Roger long before that. One investigatory report obtained by the Arizona Daily Independent shows two Attorney General's Office special agents traveled to San Luis in January of 2021 to obtain Torres' fingerprints under a court-approved search warrant. Now, I will mention that fingerprints played a fairly large role in this whole investigation, with both the FBI as well as the Arizona Department of Public Safety's crime lab being able to lift prints from both dozens of ballots, as well as the envelopes that those ballots came in. The report continues. Quote, other Attorney General's Office records reveal a photo of Torres was shown to at least one witness who told agents she left two 2020 primary election ballots outside her door for someone to pick up and deliver to a polling place. In his report, Special Agent Roger Gaisler wrote this about an interview he conducted. The witness confirmed receiving a call about leaving their ballots for someone to collect and deliver for them. Gaisler further noted that the witness observed the unnamed woman come to the door and collect the ballots. Which again, as we mentioned earlier in the episode, within the state of Arizona, this type of ballot harvesting operation that's being described here is overtly illegal, unless this woman was leaving and picking up ballots only from the doorsteps of her immediate family members, which was obviously not the case. Regardless, here's what wound up happening with these two particular women. You had Ms. Nadia Buchanan plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of ballot abuse, and she was sentenced to 24 months of probation, as well as And then secondly, and perhaps more interestingly, you had Ms. Gloria Torres also plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of ballot abuse. She was also sentenced to 24 months of probation, as well as a $2,500 fine. However, and here's the interesting part, Ms. Gloria Torres is a sitting member of the San Luis City Council, and as a part of her guilty plea, moving forward, she will not be allowed to run for re-election, nor will she be allowed to be appointed to public office ever again. However, she was allowed to finish the remainder of her current term in office, which ends in December of 2024, meaning as a practical matter that Ms. Gloria Torres will continue to be in office until the end of this year. And here's the cherry on top. Just a few months ago, the San Luis City Council actually selected Gloria Torres to be the city's new vice mayor. I repeat, despite everything that we've discussed thus far in today's episode, the City Council of San Luis selected Ms. Gloria Torres to be their new vice mayor. You can make of that what you will. Regardless, if you'd like to go deeper into anything we discussed in today's episode, including a link to the full videotape showing what was taking place outside of the polling location in the year 2020, I'll throw all those links down into the description box below this video if you're the type of person that likes to dig into the weeds. All I ask in return is that as you're making your way down there to those links, take a super quick detour to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that the YouTube algorithm will be quite literally forced to share this information out to ever more people. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment. 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