A Miami-Dade elections worker convicted of fraud will be under house arrest for the next two years.
Gladys Coego, 74, received two years of house arrest and three years of probation during a Wednesday hearing. She 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. 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.
Coego had no previous criminal record. Nobody — not detectives, prosecutors or Coego herself — could say why she filled in the ballots. She had no connection to the Regalado campaign.
Coego was charged with two felony counts of filling out somebody else’s absentee ballot.