LVS Casino Petition Sees Florida Woman Charged with Election Fraud
An Ocala, Fla. woman has been arrested and charged with election hoax relating to the 2021 Las Vegas Sands Corp ballot effort to reserve special casino gaming in the state.
Maria Guadalupe Bautista, 24, is cladding 16 counts of fraudulent use of personal identification information, according to a statement past the Everglade State Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).
In 2021, LVS plowed an unprecedented $49.5 million into a political sue committee (PAC) called “Florida Voters inwards Charge” (FVC). The PAC was campaigning to capture an initiative on the 2022 ballot that would require voters to amend the country establishment to permit Second Earl of Guilford Sunshine State identity card rooms to become casinos.
Theoretically, this could get enabled LVS and other gaming companies to purchase a pari-mutuel scorecard way inward or around the Jacksonville region that could and so make been converted into a Las Vegas-style gambling casino resort.
The take the field was fiercely opposed past the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which has exclusivity on cassino gaming inward the state. The federation of tribes also funneled tens of millions into counterattacking the proposal.
Raising the Dead
Ultimately, the FVC ballot initiative failed to get under one's skin the requisite list of signatures. But not before election supervisors inwards several counties noticed an unprecedented identification number of shut-in submissions, some of which included the names of people who had died.
One supervisor told the Northwest Everglade State Daily News that she had discovered the signature of a adult female she used to view at Church who had been dead for cinque years. Another told The Miami Herald he had found his own make and that of his married woman on unity of the petitions.
The FDLE began investigating the fraudulent petitions inward November 2021, after Marion County Supervisor of Election staff identified 767 suspicious submissions. Bautista turned inward 191 of the suspected fraudulent forms.
Investigators found that 16 petitions submitted by Bautista contained fraudulent signatures. Two of those were from people who had died prior to submission, according to the FDLE. Bautista was set-aside(p) into the Marion County Jail on Tues where she is existence held on an $80K bond.
She is the arcsecond individual to be charged with elector put-on inwards relation to the incident following the check inwards tardily May of Kasandra Baylor, a 65-year-old St. Petersburg woman.
Accusations Fly
Campaigning on both sides of the egress was unsavory from the get-go. FVC claimed the Seminoles used underhand tactics to undermine its ballot initiative, including the “coordinated torment and intimidation” of theme song gatherers.
In a lawsuit, later withdrawn, the PAC alleged entities backed past the Seminoles were purposefully submitting shut-in signatures. It also accused the tribe of paying FVC signature gatherers to quit workings on the campaign, and yet to depart the state.
Meanwhile, the Seminoles accused FVC of paying petitioners per signature, sort of than by the hour, which has been illegal in Sunshine State since 2019.
Both sides fervently denied all of the allegations at the time.
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