Vote buying in Texas?

McAllen Monitor:

Donna school board President Alfredo Lugo hanged himself in his home on New Year’s Day, authorities confirmed Thursday.

The motive for the suicide was not immediately clear, but it came shortly after federal authorities arrested three women accused of buying votes for school board candidates in the most recent Donna ISD election.

Lugo and three of his incumbent allies were all reelected in that election in November 2012.

The FBI arrested Diana Castañeda, Guadalupe Escamilla and Rebecca Gonzalez last month. Escamilla and Gonzalez are accused of acting as politiqueras to pay voters $10 to $20 per ballot cast for particular candidates for Donna school board, according to court documents.

Criminal complaints against the three women do not name Lugo nor any other Donna school board trustees or candidates. It’s unclear whether the recent arrests prompted Lugo to hang himself.

FBI agents began looking into Gonzalez in December 2012, after three unidentified witnesses said they had been driven to the polls and paid to vote for particular candidates, according to a criminal complaint. Gonzalez told agents that a campaign manager gave her $40 on multiple occasions to pay voters and that the candidates themselves had instructed her to pay $5 to $10 per vote.

According to similar documents, Escamilla told federal agents in March that two candidates for the Donna school board had given her $100 to pay voters to cast ballots for them and that she did so, offering money, cigarettes and food.
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Perhaps they though it cheaper and more effective than running ads and campaigning.  It might have also been seen as a way of avoiding the new voter ID law for the type of voter fraud used in the past.  Those who were paid certainly sold an important right cheap.