A political consultant in San Antonio, Texas, was caught on a hidden camera in a Project Veritas undercover investigation coercing and bribing voters to vote Democrat, violating Texas and federal law.
In an exchange in a video published Tuesday, Raquel Rodriguez examines an elderly woman’s ballot and convinces her to change her vote from Republican Sen. John Cornyn to Democratic challenger MJ Hegar.
“You can do, you can vote for whoever you want, but our conversation that we had, you said you were voting for Hegar, ’cause you were going straight Democrat,” Rodriguez says. “You said you’re voting straight Democrat per our conversation, so that when you’re voting for the straight Dem – ‘cause that’s what you want to do, correct?”
In the video, Rodriguez shows the woman how to change her vote by crossing out the line for Cornyn and putting her initials next to the line, so “they know it was done accidentally.”
The Project Veritas journalist who accompanied Rodriguez says: “So, John Cornyn, she voted for John Cornyn and then you made her—”
Rodriguez, who says she’s “technically” working for Republican U.S. House candidate Mauro Garza, interjects, “That’s my job.”
After the voter “corrects” her ballot, Rodriguez presents her with a shawl as a gift.
Rodriguez said she has a gift budget of $2,500 and also she gives voters rosaries, diabetic socks and wallets.
“That’s illegal. I could go to jail,” Rodriguez acknowledges to the Project Veritas journalist. “If I go to prison, I do not look cute in stripes … I will hate you forever.”
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe said his team “discovered a voter fraud system positioned to swing Texas in 2020.”
“These so-called ‘ballot chasers’ use a mix of gifts and coercion to work down their list of targeted voters and make sure they vote for their paymasters,” he said. “The actions violate both federal and state law and constitute a direct threat to the integrity of our election-based republic.”
Rodriguez says to the undercover journalist she “can honestly say I’m bringing in at least 7,000 votes to the polls.”
She said she drops off “bundles of ballots at different post offices to avoid suspicion.”
“I go through the entire city. I’ll take 20 (ballots) here, 30 here, 40 here.”
See the video: