Ballot fraud won’t send elderly Miami woman to jail but she will lose right to vote
But at 74, Coego is elderly, diabetic and depressed, her relatives told a judge on Wednesday.
She had no previous criminal record. And nobody -- not detectives, prosecutors or even Coego herself -- could say why she filled in the ballots. She had no known ties to any campaign, there was no evidence anyone paid her and she illegally filled only a few ballots before being spotted. Yet her small-time case led to bigly national headlines, coming as then-candidate
"Emotionally, I am destroyed," Coego said in Spanish. "I have no explanation for what I have done. ... No one offered me anything in exchange for what I did."
For those reasons, a
Circuit Judge Alberto Milián acknowledged that "there is a perception in this community that there is a lack of integrity in the election process, especially in the issue of absentee ballots."
"This appears to be an isolated incident," Milián said, adding: "I don't want to make this defendant a poster child or scapegoat for the perceived inequities of the system."
Coego's arrest just weeks before the November
Coego was arrested along with another low-level campaigner,
Coego was charged with two felony counts of filling out somebody else's absentee ballot.
She was hired by a temp agency to work as an elections support specialist, to be paid
According to police, fellow workers saw her marking absentee ballots for
She did not have any connection to the Regalado campaign. When confronted by police, Coego cooperated but could offer no explanation.
"It does bother me that I don't know why she did it,"
Coego pleaded guilty with no plea deal. She was never going to get a lengthy sentence, but there have been few similar cases to use as a road map for sentencing. One woman in
"She was entrusted to oversee a small portion of our democratic institution," Helfmeyer said. "She violated that trust."
Although Judge Milián opted not to send Coego to jail, he noted she is now a convicted felon in
"She will lose her ability to vote and participate in the democratic system," Milián said.
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