A parade of character witnesses provided a judge with glowing reports about a southern Arizona woman who admitted collecting four voted early ballots in the 2020 primary election.
The testimony painted a picture of a woman who was remorseful and a pillar of the small border community of San Luis. The 66-year-old mother and grandmother has spent her life helping others while raising her children and caring for her elderly mother.
They said that prison or jail time would hurt the community.
A school board member and former mayor in San Luis has pleaded guilty to a felony violation of Arizona's "ballot harvesting" law, which bars anyone but a person's relative, housemate or caregivers from returning votes for them. After she agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, she pleaded guilty to the same charge and was sentenced to a year in jail.
Her agreement states that she will be sentenced for a period of time. She went to a polling place and took four ballots with her.
Republicans have seized on the case as a sign of widespread voting fraud, but it is the onlyballot harvesting case ever prosecuted under Arizona's 2016 law banning the practice, and less than a dozen cases from the 2020 election have been filed in a state where more than 3.1 million votes have
She told the court that her community involvement and volunteer work are hard to describe.
Castillo said that she puts him in a bad light. I have never seen someone give back more to the community than Ms. Fuentes.
She said that not being in the community would be a bad thing.
A retired San Luis police officer and a former state senator were two of the people who testified before Judge Roger Nelson.
A lot of people in the community look up to her.
Nelson was told by the assistant attorney general that the case was about the security of elections and the law againstballot harvesting. The law was upheld by the US Supreme Court last year.
The question remains what they were doing, even though they were caught on video by a political rival outside a vote center.
The judge was told that the question was why Fuentes felt the need to exert pressure over people in her community. The issue of public integrity is here.
Prosecutors alleged in court papers that she ran a sophisticated operation using her status in Democratic politics in San Luis to convince voters to allow her to gather and to fill out their ballots. Both pleaded guilty to a single count of ballot abuse after being indicted on more serious charges.
In the past 20 years, no one with a clean record has ever been sentenced to jail or prison according to a defense expert. Nelson was told that doing so would be a mistake.
Chapman said that she entered a plea of guilty to ballot abuse. The rest of the allegations against Ms. Fuentes are mostly made-up by election-denying political opponents who have a vendetta against her.
Nelson's court assistant told attorneys that he intended to give them 30 days in jail. Both women will be sentenced next week.
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