Edinburg Mayor Richard Molina charged with orchestrating an illegal voting scheme

EDINBURG - Edinburg Mayor Richard Molina has been arrested for voter fraud, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday morning, the latest in a string of arrests the state’s election fraud unit has made in connection with what Paxton described as “an organized illegal voting scheme” in the November 2017 municipal election that brought Molina to power.

According to a news release from the attorney general’s office, Molina directed voters to change their addresses to places where they did not live — including an apartment complex owned by Molina — so they could vote for him. Molina, hailed as an “anti-establishment” outsider, won the election by 1,240 votes, unseating incumbent Mayor Richard Garcia in the South Texas town.

Molina and his wife, Dalia, turned themselves in Thursday morning, according to local reports, and he received a $20,000 cash bond for three illegal voting charges, one of them a first-degree felony.

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