Democrat Power Players Indicted in Widespread Texas Ballot Harvesting Scandal
A major voter fraud scandal is rocking the Texas Democratic Party as former Bexar County Democratic Chair Juan Manuel Medina and eight other political figures face indictments over what prosecutors describe as an illegal ballot-harvesting operation.
According to Newsmax, Medina — once a candidate for mayor of San Antonio — is now charged with two counts of vote harvesting. The charges stem from a sweeping statewide election integrity investigation spearheaded by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
At the heart of the scheme is Democrat Cecilia Castellano, who lost her 2024 bid for Texas House District 80 to Republican Don McLaughlin. Prosecutors allege that Medina offered “compensation or other benefit” to two individuals, Rachel Leal and former Dilley council member Inelda Rodriguez, in exchange for harvesting ballots to benefit Castellano’s campaign.
Castellano, Leal, and Rodriguez were all indicted alongside Medina.
“Cecilia is innocent. She didn’t do anything illegal, and I don’t think they are going to be able to prove it,” claimed her attorney Don Flanary, in comments to The Texas Tribune. “The problem is it’s very chilling for people.”
Also caught in the legal dragnet are former Pearsall Mayor Petra Davina Trevino, former Dilley Mayor Mary Ann Obregon, Susanna Flores Carrizales, Frio County Commissioner Raul Carrizales III, and Pearsall ISD Board Secretary Maricela Garcia Benavides.
The indictments come on the heels of an earlier announcement from Paxton in May, when six individuals were charged in connection to the same Frio County probe. That phase of the investigation included a raid on Medina’s home and the confiscation of Castellano’s phone.
Paxton’s office has been relentless in its push for election security. In 2023, a state district judge attempted to block his efforts to halt the mass mailing of voter registration forms in Bexar County, a decision later overturned by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
Last month, Paxton announced yet another alarming development: his office is now investigating 33 “potential noncitizens” flagged by the Texas Secretary of State for allegedly casting votes in the 2024 election. These alerts came through the federal SAVE system, which checks immigration and citizenship status through the Department of Homeland Security.
Texas isn’t the only state battling Democrat-linked ballot fraud.
In October 2022, Arizona’s then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich secured indictments in a vote-harvesting scheme tied to the 2020 election. Two San Luis residents, Gloria Lopez Torres and Nadia Guadalupe Lizarraga-Mayorquin, were charged with conspiracy and ballot abuse for collecting and submitting ballots from other voters — a felony under Arizona law.
According to The Epoch Times, “The Grand Jury indictments, returned on October 3, 2022, alleging that Torres collected seven ballots from Lizarraga-Mayorquin and that Lizarraga-Mayorquin collected at least one ballot from a third party.”
The Arizona AG’s office elaborated:
“Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced that Gloria Lopez Torres of San Luis, and Nadia Guadalupe Lizarraga-Mayorquin of San Luis, also known as Nadia Buchanan, have been charged by the State Grand Jury with Conspiracy and Ballot Abuse arising from an alleged ‘ballot harvesting’ scheme, where early ballots from other voters were collected and deposited into a ballot box on primary Election Day, August 4, 2020."
While Democrats and the media routinely downplay or deny the existence of widespread election fraud, these cases—spanning multiple states—underscore exactly why President Donald J. Trump and Republicans continue to fight for secure, transparent elections.