Two men were charged with multiple felony counts of voter fraud in Los Angeles after allegedly submitting thousands of fraudulent ballot applications on behalf of homeless people.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced on Tuesday that Carlos Antonio de Bourbon Montenegro and his accomplice, Marcos Raul Arevalo, allegedly used post office boxes and Montenegro’s home address “as mailing addresses for over 8,000 voter registration applications for fictitious, nonexistent, or decades dead persons, that were submitted for processing to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office and the California Secretary of State.”
Montenegro is being arraigned on 18 felony counts of voter fraud and more than 10 additional felony counts for submitting falsified ballot applications during his bid to run for mayor of Hawthorne, Calif., according to NBC 4 News Los Angeles.
He faces up to 15 years in prison, and Arevalo faces aa prison sentence of up to seven years.
Officials said Montenegro submitted and filed 41 signatures and addresses to the city clerk just this summer, and 18 of these falsified applications were verified.
Voter fraud has become a contentious political issue in recent months following Democrats’ attempts to expand mail-in voting.
President Trump has accused Democrats of opening the electoral process up to rampant voter fraud, which is what he believes cost him the presidential election.
I won the Election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 16, 2020
Democrats, however, insist that voter fraud is just a myth and that there is “no evidence” of widespread abuse.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded that Trump concede to Democratic candidate Joe Biden, calling Trump’s concerns a “pathetic political performance.”
“The election is not in doubt,” Schumer said last week. “This is nothing more than a temper tantrum by Republicans.”
