An article in Breitbart Texas today demonstrates how rampant, illegal actions in elections can corrupt even the most basic government services in the process:

Tuesday morning, 43-year-old Noe Abdon Olvera went before U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez and pleaded guilty to one count of bribery of a public official. Olvera is set to be sentenced in May at which time he faces up to 15 years in prison.

The case against Olvera revealed that in October 2014, Olvera took $1,000 in exchange for names and addresses of residents in his postal route that received absentee ballots during the previous 2014 Democratic Primary. According to prosecutors, Olvera’s role was tied to the 2014 Hidalgo County Sheriff’s race.

The mailman was reportedly working with a local “politiquera” who would say or do just about anything to rustle up votes for their candidate-employer:

Noe rode with me a few times to to go talk to people. He was making promises to a lot of people. He told one lady that he was going to help her get her citizenship papers in return for for her vote for Mayor Salinas. Another man we picked up was mentally disabled, and Noe Olvera promised him money for his vote. After taking the man to vote, Noe did not pay him. Noe had given him a card with Mayor Salinas’ name on it so that he would know who to vote for. On several occasions, I would drive behind Noe while he was on his mail route. He would call me and tell me when he would deliver a mail-in ballot at a home. I would write down the addresses or I would stop by and talk to the people. Another day, he called and told me that they had received a lot of mail-in ballots and that he was going to write all the addresses down for me.

PILF President J. Christian Adams noted in the piece that Texas could do more to protect absentee voters from ballot interception and manipulation attempts.

“At a minimum, mail voters should be required to provide identification proofs like seen in Kansas. That added safeguard better protects voters when their ballots are wrongfully intercepted,” Adams added.

Read the full article at Breitbart Texas, here.