Bodycam Footage Shows Texas Man Admitting to Brazen Cash-for-Ballots Scheme

The race for county judge in the second biggest county in Texas was rocked last month when allegations of past fraudulent ballot harvesting surfaced against Democrat nominee Deborah Peoples. Footage from a bodycam worn by a Fort Worth police officer shows a man telling a policeman that Peoples allegedly paid him $200 cash for every fraudulently cast absentee ballot he could deliver in the months before the 2016 presidential election. The footage of the January 3, 2020, conversation was obtained through a public record request and first appeared in a Gateway Pundit article in mid-September. The Fort Worth police department confirmed the video's authenticity to The Epoch Times. The video shows a nighttime discussion between the officer and a bicyclist he stopped for riding in the wrong direction on a public street. After identifying the rider as Charles Jackson, the officer realized he was acquainted with Jackson from a previous encounter on the streets of Fort Worth in 2016. During the first encounter, the homeless Jackson had difficulty explaining why he had $1,000 in cash on his person. Jackson said it had something to do with the election. At the time, the officer warned him that tampering with elections could have severe consequences and let him go. Jackson did not heed the policeman's advice, and sometime after his 2016 brush with law enforcement, he was arrested and charged with providing false information on a voting application. In the 2020 body cam video, Jackson said that after his arrest, he was quickly bailed out of jail by a person he knew to be closely affiliated with Peoples. He also said the judge imposed a gag order on all parties to the case. Jackson pleaded guilty in April 2019 in exchange for a lesser sentence. "They trying to get me for 10 years ... I didn't know it was that bad ... It turned out they'd been stealing votes," he told the policeman in the video. Despite a record of previous felonies, which made him eligible to serve up to 10 years in prison, Jackson was sentenced to 10 days in jail with credit for ten days served. The gag order did not stop Jackson from telling the policeman who pulled him over in 2020 that he was hired by Deborah Peoples, then chairperson of the Tarrant County Democrat Party. "I can talk now," said Jackson. "I'm done with it ... Deborah gave me cash." Jackson said he was provided with the personal voting registration information of elderly Texans. His job was to visit them and deceive them into signing absentee ballot documents that he misrepresented as county election forms used to certify that their personal data was correct. Jackson then voted for all the Democrat candidates listed on the ballots and turned them in for cash. The victims had no idea what was happening. Many were surprised when they requested an absentee ballot or showed up at the polls on election day and were told they had already voted. In the video, Jackson alleges that Peoples personally paid him in cash for his services. He said he was also rewarded with a moped and bonuses over the six months he engaged in the ballot harvesting scam—an enterprise that he claimed earned him between $900 and $1,200 per week. Peoples did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times. On September 26, 2022, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram quoted Peoples saying that Republicans were “disrespecting voters by leaning on false information from an outlet famous for spreading lies to serve an extreme agenda.” In an October 4 phone interview with The Epoch Times, Timothy O’Hare, Peoples’ Republican opponent, explained that in Tarrant County, the position of County Judge is akin to a county executive and carries immense administrative authority. “It’s like being the mayor of the county. Over two million people live here. We are the third largest county in Texas and the fifteenth largest in the United States.” Commenting on the body cam video, O’Hare said people should watch it and decide for themselves what to believe. “If Deborah Peoples participated in an illegal voting operation, she