Texas Mayoral Candidate Arrested, Charged With 109 Election Fraud Felonies in Alleged Absentee Ballot Scheme
Richard Moorhead
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A candidate for mayor of a Dallas suburb has been arrested and charged with 109 felonies pertaining to election an ballot fraud, with Denton County authorities alleging he oversaw a complicated election fraud scheme in which absentee ballots of voters were falsely mailed to a nursing home.
Zul Mirza Mohamed is running for mayor of Carrollton, Texas in a non-partisan election. His opponent, incumbent Carollton mayor Kevin Falconer, is nominally Republican, suggesting that Mohamed is aligned with the Democratic Party.
Mohamed was arrested on Wednesday night after police reportedly found 25 mail-in absentee ballots in his residence while executing a search warrant. The Denton County Board of Elections had contacted the Denton Sheriff’s Office after they received more than 80 requests for mail-in ballots at a PO box supposedly affiliated with one nursing home, an unusually large request even for such a residence.
When investigators spoke to many of the individuals whose ballots had been sent to the PO box, they learned that they hadn’t requested absentee ballots at all. The PO box in question ultimately belonged to Mohamed, a candidate who had run for the Carollton City Council in 2018, only to lose.
Mohamed is being charged with 25 counts of knowingly possessing a ballot with intent to defraud, a second-degree felony, and 84 counts of providing false info on a voting application, a third-degree felony. A single second-degree felony can merit from two to twenty years in state prison if it leads to a conviction, and the multitude of felony charges against the candidate may ensure he spends more than a decade in prison.
The DCSO, along with the Texas Attorney General's Office, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Lewisville PD has been investigating this criminal activity and arrested Carrollton Mayoral candidate Zul Mirza Mohamed with 109 felonies related to voter fraud. pic.twitter.com/7PRcWkCCEI
— Denton Co Sheriff (@DentonCoSheriff) October 8, 2020
Authorities supposedly caught Mohamed red-handed in the process of stuffing falsely obtained ballots of Dallas County voters when he was arrested. If he had mailed in the ballots of the voters whose identity he allegedly impersonated, they would not have had their vote ultimately counted on election day. He’s being held at the Denton County jail on a $330,000 bond.
“Mail ballots are inherently insecure and vulnerable to fraud,” Texas Attorney General Paxton said in response to the criminal charges. “I am committed to safeguarding the integrity of our elections. My office is prepared to assist any Texas county in combating this form of fraud.”
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