The bloated controversy over March’s District 5 Supervisor
election took another step towards resolution this week as San
Benito County Superior Court Judge Tom Breen dismissed charges
against Maria Guadalupe Araujo. It’s good to see the vestiges of
this debacle being cleaned up, but there’s still some work to
do.
The bloated controversy over March’s District 5 Supervisor election took another step towards resolution this week as San Benito County Superior Court Judge Tom Breen dismissed charges against Maria Guadalupe Araujo. It’s good to see the vestiges of this debacle being cleaned up, but there’s still some work to do.
Araujo was charged with felony voter fraud on allegations she knowingly tried to vote twice in the hotly contested supervisor race last March. Breen made the right choice to dismiss the charges saying it was clear there was no intent on Araujo’s part to defraud the system. That should have been just as clear to District Attorney John Sarsfield. He never should have prosecuted someone for an honest mistake by someone else. But he chose to prosecute this case, which could have put the mother of two in jail for up to three years, in what can only be construed as another of his politically-motivated attempts to keep Jaime De la Cruz off the board.
Araujo said she thought her absentee ballot had been lost and never mailed to the elections department when she went to polls on election day last year. Poll workers should have provided her with a provisional ballot, that would only be counted if her absentee ballot never appeared. However, the poll inspector had a heart attack on election day and the ensuing chaos appears to have resulted in the mistake that allowed Araujo to vote twice.
The fact that the poll workers’ mistake allowed her to cast another regular ballot should have been enough to clear her name. If anyone was at fault, it was the elections department staff – not a woman who only wanted to make sure her vote was counted.
With Araujo’s dismissal, the District 5 election mess seems to have almost dissipated – that is, of course, except for the lawsuit District 5 election winner De La Cruz has against the county and the former Board of Supervisors. In the suit, De La Cruz alleges the former supervisors conspired to keep him from being seated on the Board of Supervisors for personal reasons and because he is Latino.
Of all the people involved with the election hullabaloo, one would think De La Cruz would have the greatest interest in putting it all behind him. Instead, De La Cruz is still stubbornly suing the taxpayers of San Benito County for $5 million.
His suit makes about as much sense as the district attorney’s prosecution of Araujo. De La Cruz is holding the public’s feet to the fire instead of going after the people he feels wronged him. De La Cruz should drop the suit and focus on handling the people’s business. Araujo did nothing wrong by trying to vote and the people of San Benito County did no wrong to De La Cruz.
If De La Cruz is adamant about finding some kind of retribution for his perceived mistreatment, then he should sue the people he thinks are responsible, not the taxpayers and voters who put him into office.
The Board of Supervisors are right in fighting this suit tooth and nail. De La Cruz has been through a lot during this fiasco, but so has the public. He should drop the lawsuit, put the District 5 election and the ugly events that followed it to rest and move on. The only thing worse than a sore loser, is a sore winner.
