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Some people allegedly targeted by two Louisiana officials in a voter fraud scheme appear to have been willing to forgo their votes for as little as $ 10.
Former Amite City Police Chief Jerry Trabona, 73, and current City Council member Kristian Hart, 49, have reportedly paid people cash – ranging from $ 10 to $ 20 – in exchange for votes in two local elections five years ago, according to a federal indictment.
Trabona and Hart, both Democrats, are said to have worked together on a scheme in which they recruited quasi-campaign operatives and gave them hundreds of dollars to bribe the people of Amite to vote for them.
The two men are also accused of driving voters they had bribed to polling stations.
The pair made third-party vote buyers sign statements falsely saying they would “not make any opening of any kind to a voter or other person offering a financial reward or other benefit in exchange for a vote. “, according to documents later obtained by the FBI.
The payments detailed in the indictment never exceeded $ 20. In one case, one of the third-party vote buyers said people wanted $ 20 for their vote instead of the $ 10 they were originally offered. Trabona conceded that the person could pay voters $ 20, according to the indictment.
Vote buying has been rife in Louisiana for generations among the two major political parties.
Trabona and Hart’s accusations stem from a large FBI investigation that began in 2018 that examined allegations of vote-buying in Tangipahoa Parish. The office focused largely on the Amite region, interviewing a range of local politicians and examining electoral activity and campaign spending in the region.
A federal grand jury indicted a former police chief in Amite City and a current member of city council over allegations that the two local authorities …
Hart and Trabona are only accused of tampering with their own municipal elections. But the couple face federal charges because candidates for federal office appeared on the ballots in which the two officials allegedly interfered: the November 2016 open primary ballot, which included candidates for the US presidential race, and the 2016 Open General in December of that year, which included a race for the US Senate.
Trabona was running for re-election as police chief in the Louisiana primary ballot opened in November. Hart ran for his city council seat in the following month’s general election, according to their indictment.
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The indictment paints a picture of the two men working together, from January 2016, to hire at least six third-party vote buyers (these people are only identified in the indictment by letters, for example , “Person A”). They would meet officers at various locations around Amite, the document says, including in store parking lots and homes, and give them payments ranging from $ 100 to $ 500.
Vote buyers would then be asked to use the money to pay voters to mark their ballots in favor of Hart and Trabona in their respective races, the indictment says.
Hart also directly paid someone $ 20 to vote for him at least once, according to the document.
AMITE CITY – An Amite city councilor indicted in January with a large number of electoral fraud offenses pleaded guilty on Monday to one misdemeanor …
A voice purchase price is often a nominal payout of $ 5 to $ 15.
The US Department of Justice, however, has stated that a vote-buying bribe can be “anything of monetary value, including cash, alcohol, lottery odds and social benefits such as food stamps.
The charges announced on Tuesday follow a separate investigation by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry into the purchase of votes in Amite by another city councilor in a local election. That investigation began in January, at the height of unfounded Republican accusations of electoral fraud following the electoral defeat of former President Donald Trump.
The separate investigation ended with former city councilor Emmanuel Zanders, 52, a Democrat, who pleaded guilty in July to one count of electoral fraud after reaching a deal with the district attorney.
Trabona and Hart are scheduled to appear in federal court in New Orleans on Friday.
Editor Faimon Roberts III and former editor Jim Mustian contributed to this report.
James Finn writes for The Advocate as a member of the Report For America corps. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @RJamesFinn.
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