OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 11:07 AM PT – Tuesday, October 18, 2022
An Arizona woman who was convicted of ballot harvesting has been sentenced to jail time.
A Yuma County Superior Court judge recently ordered Guillermina Fuentes, a 66-year-old school board member and the former mayor of the small border city of San Luis, to serve 30 days behind bars and two years’ probation.
Fuentes pleaded guilty in June to a felony charge for her role in a ballot harvesting scheme in which she illegally collected ballots she was not authorized to possess. Her attorney’s sought probation without jail time. Still, during her sentencing, the presiding Judge Roger Nelson expressed doubts over whether Fuentes had fully taken responsibility for committing a crime.
“The defendant acknowledged responsibility for carrying ballots for someone else,” he said. “However, she stated, ‘I’m not a criminal.’”
Fuentes was ordered to begin her sentence last weekend. She is not eligible for an early release.