Border Town Election Ends With Extortion and Voter Fraud Arrests

Posted by Gateway Guest Blogger
Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 1:29 AM

Gateway Pundit:

By: Rachel Pulaski

The municipal election along the Mexican border in Sunland Park New Mexico has led to multiple arrests including voter fraud and a mayoral candidate charged with extortion. This is the second border town in New Mexico proven corrupt in the past year.

Rob Nikolewski from Capitol Report New Mexico reported:

One of the weirdest elections in the country was held in the little border town of Sunland Park on Tuesday (March 6) as a mayoral candidate who is facing charges of extortion defeated a rival who received a lapdance from a topless woman in his campaign office days before voters went to the polls. Mayor pro tem and city council member Daniel Salinas- the extortion guy — defeated Gerardo Hernandez – the lapdance guy — 637-553 in unofficial results Tuesday night. But this thing may not be over for a number of reasons.

First, New Mexico law forbids anyone convicted of a felony from holding elected office and Salinas is facing charges that he tried to blackmail Gerardo Hernandez into dropping out of the race. We’ll get to that later because there are a number of other threads to this story. Such as the fact that officials from the state auditor’s office have come down to Sunland Park’s City Hall to begin a comprehensive audit of the city’s finances amid charges of mismanagement. And the Secretary of State’s office says that it found that at least six people who live just across Sunland Park’s city limits in El Paso illegally came into New Mexico and voted early in the mayoral race. On Tuesday, a fifth person associated with a city official was arrested and charged in the voter fraud accusations. A sixth person is still being sought.
Wait, there’s more.

State police recently took city worker Silvia Gomez into custody, saying she approached a couple from Texas who came to city hall looking for a building permit in January and asked them to illegally register to vote if they would cast ballots for Salinas. The district attorney for Doña Ana County, Amy Orlando, saw so much malfeasance that she asked to have to the election delayed but a district court judge refused her request and the election went off as scheduled Tuesday, although there was a large state police presence at the polls to make sure there were no incidents. It all makes Putin’s Russia look like Athenian democracy.

Keep reading there is more.