MIAMI (AP) — A Florida elections worker convicted of fraud will not face jail time.
The Miami Herald reports that 74-year-old Gladys Coego received two years of house arrest and three years of probation during a Wednesday hearing. She had pleaded guilty to filling out somebody else’s absentee ballot.
Coego was hired by a temp agency and working as an elections support specialist at the Miami-Dade election office last October, just weeks before the Nov. 8 election. Her job was to open, count and sort vote-by-mail absentee ballots.
Police say fellow workers saw her marking absentee ballots for Miami-Dade mayoral candidate Raquel Regalado, who ultimately lost to incumbent Carlos Gimenez. Coego used a pen smuggled into the ballot-sorting room inside her purse. She had no connection to the Regalado campaign.
