CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Freer Mayor Arnoldo Cantu has officially been declared the winner of the democratic primary runoff election for Duval County judge after a controversial turn of events.
Opposition Albert Martinez believes that Cantu's wife used her influence as Duval County's democratic party chairman to change the outcome of the election.
"The democratic chairperson used her position to give her husband the full advantage and left me out of the contention," Martinez said. Cantu dismissed this claim, saying he and his wife did nothing to change the outcome of this election.
After the runoff election, around 140 mail-in ballots were excluded from the count because they did not have the voter's identification number written. Notice was sent out to those who left out the required information, and only 87 were returned corrected.
Cantu said this was how he went from losing by five votes, to winning by four. Martinez has not accepted this explanation as easily.
"The wife of my opponent had the list, and they utilized this list to go and identify all of the mail-in ballots that they assumed were friendly to my opponent," Martinez explained. He continued, saying Cantu and his wife "went and knocked on their door or called them by telephone, asking them to go, and in many cases, put them in their car by the 'politiceras' to go and correct the error on their ballot."
Martinez said he will ask for a recount and has already filed several complaints with state election officials. Meanwhile, Cantu said he's not worried about the allegations, and is instead looking forward to facing his republican opponent in the November election.
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