Grand Jury Indicts Former Texas Mayoral Candidate on 109 Felony Voter Fraud Charges
I live roughly 15 minutes away from Carrollton, Texas, and it is far from the first place I would label as a corrupt wasteland. It is a beautiful, safe and prosperous suburb of Dallas.
However, most voter fraud occurs on the local level, and even idyllic municipalities are not exempt from this phenomenon.
According to the Denton Record-Chronicle, Zul Mirza Mohamed, who ran for Carrollton mayor last year, was arrested in October on 109 felony charges — all of which were related to voter fraud.
The charges included 25 counts of unlawful possession of a ballot/ballot envelope without request of the voter, which is a second-degree felony in Texas, and 84 counts of fraudulent use of a mail ballot application, which is a third-degree felony in Texas, the newspaper reported.
A Denton County Sheriff’s Office news release obtained by the Record-Chronicle said that the sheriff’s office was notified on Sept. 23 of possible fraud with absentee ballot applications.
An individual had directed that the ballots be sent to a post office box in a nearby town — which apparently belonged to a nursing home — but investigators learned that none of the relevant actors had asked for those ballots, the news release continued.
The ballots were procured using a fake Texas driver’s license, and a fake University of North Texas student ID, according to the release.
Mohamed’s bail was set at over $330,000, and the walls have only continued to close in on his scheme since.
The Record-Chronicle reported in a Friday article that Mohamed has been indicted on all 109 charges. The evidence against him is extremely strong, and I would be shocked if he were not criminally convicted in some way.
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This is Texas, after all. We take voter fraud very seriously, as a Democratic county commissioner in east Texas found out the hard way. Texas has convicted more than 150 people on charges related to voter fraud since 2005, according to the Record-Chronicle. Hundreds more are still in the judicial process or under preliminary investigation.
Municipal elections in Texas are non-partisan, and Mohamed described himself in the comments of a 2018 Facebook post as an independent. Back when he ran for city council, his policy positions included support for the construction of mini homes, and a desire to “revitalize our small business sector in our city as well as create new avenues for the young demographic that continues to increase.”
But what the left doesn’t understand about conservative concerns regarding voter fraud and electoral reform, in general, is that we are not trying to rig elections for ourselves.
All voter fraud, no matter in what party it originates, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
We simply want the winner — whatever political affiliation they may have — to have won fairly. To ensure that fairness, safeguards that protect our elections without depriving people of their right to vote should be put in place.
Denton County Sheriff Tracy Murphree said it best. He told KTVT-TV, “The fact an actual candidate for public office would engage in these activities is appalling.”
“The fact that we caught it this time, doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened in elections past. I’m sure it has. Just people are paying more attention. I think election officials are paying more attention. I think they’re keeping a closer eye on it. I personally believe voting by mail is a dangerous thing,” Murphree said.
It’s a sad reflection on us if we have to fight so hard to merely identify a problem.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
