Testimony has started in the voter fraud trial of Robstown utility board trustee Robert Gonzalez.
The defense claims the case is politically motivated. A politically-motivated conspiracy is what Robert Gonzalez’s defense attorney is calling those charges.
Gonzalez is accused of having knowledge of how someone voted in a December 2016 election and then sharing that information with someone else.
During opening statements, Gonzalez’s attorney Terry Shamsie said Gonzalez did watch as one man voted.
Shamsie says he then told election officials about the vote. But Shamsie told the jury his client did that because Gonzalez believed the man was blind and not properly assisted at the polls.
Shamsie said Gonzalez asked that the matter be investigated. But during testimony, election officials said Gonzalez spent much of the day walking voters into the voting booth to help them vote, similar to what you see Gonzalez doing in this surveillance video from that 2016 runoff election.
One election official testified that at one point, Gonzalez looked over a voter’s shoulder and saw that person had voted for his opponent.
According to that election official, Gonzalez became angry, complained about what he saw and asked that the vote be changed.
We pulled the records and they show Gonzalez helped a total of 19 people vote during his runoff election.
The man that Gonzalez claims he was trying to help also testified Tuesday.
He told the jury he never had any problems when he was casting his vote.
6-Investigates has been following this case since 2017.
