A reader posted a comment that a firefighter was arrested for picking up absentee ballots in the City of Miami. The reader gave a case number but I couldn't find it in the system.
Can someone please explain how you do the absentee ballot scam? I would think that the dumb voter (usually a senior citizen) is told to hold the ballot for pick-up. They then hand it over to the campaign worker who destroys it unless it is in support of their candidate and if it is in support, the campaign machine mails it. Or worse, the campaign worker help fill it out. Is that it? I think the State Attorney's office could randomly interview absentee ballot voters to stop the fraud. Ballots that arrive in large numbers on the same day just before the election are a red flag. I am told the campaigns hold them to the last minute so the opposing side has no clue they will be slaughtered by the absentee ballots. If the State Attorney's office did random interviews I think that would put a stop to the scam. Absentee ballots are a big problem in the County.
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It is now critical that the City, States Attorney, Election Board and even the FBI make sure that our elections are on the up & up. Why has this problem not been resolved before now? There needs to be better regulations and security to protect the absentee ballots from being abused. There must be efforts made to restrict the gate-keepers of the senior apartments and section 8 buildings from controlling access to candidates and providing bulk sales of votes. This must be resolved before the next elections.
I receive numerous telephone calls during a campaign, asking if I need an absentee ballot. The catch is that once completed and signed it has to return to the organization making the request. I assume if your vote disagrees with the campaign it can either be changed or destroyed. I know of an old person, whose absentee ballot was re-done by a "volunteer" who had her sign it again. The person was in early stages of Alzheimer, so she was easy to manipulate. The same happens at many adult centers or nursing homes. The absentee ballots have become an art of deceit and uber corruption. They should be used ONLY when the voter is outside the jurisdiction. Clerks can go outside to the curb to assist handicapped citizens cast their votes so there's no excuse for all the absentee ballots being distributed as if they were confetti!
Hmmm. This is getting interesting. Where is the Miami Herald when you need them. They should be investigating the election fraud. Why don't you readers send some money. I will investigate it -- Here is what I would do, go down to elections and look at all the absentee ballots received on a certain date and compare them to the signatures on file for that voter and just look for some sort of red flags...they have to be there.
A few days before the elections, lots and lots of absentees were received by the Elections Department. Unfortunately, you cannot get that information on-line anymore.
There are various people that work the absentee system for candidates, including the parents of one of the County Commissioners. What they do is chase the ballot, get it signed, and yes, in some cases hold mailing either the absentee request form or the ballot itself. Of course, there is always that telephone call to ensure they don't forget who they need to vote for.
Two of the candidates in District 3 had an absentee machine. Frank Carollo got 2,311 absentees and Mavel Lopez got 930. That is a huge number considering there was 7 candidates. I was told that these candidates themselves, wife, or son/daughter would go to the buildings to pick up the absentee ballots. In one case, the voter said who he/she was voting while they filled out the ballot and the "boletero" said that so and so was in-line with that candidate and should vote for him. Not true! This voter was manipulated to vote for someone he/she did not want to vote for only because they made him/her believe that's who he/she should vote for.
These elders are taken advantage of in so many ways. Example: Carollo targeted the elders by going over to their home with a birthday cake and taking a picture. Then he had a campaign ad begging the elders not to abandon him and to give him an opportunity. He played them well. Mavel concentrated at the Robert King High and Victoria Hospital. Can you imagine, a hospital where most of the elders are there because of advanced stages of alzheimer, and yet they vote. Who votes for them?
So here you have it...two candidates that refused to go to any forum or debate in English, yet received the majority of the absentee votes. The elections are won by voters over 75 yrs. old that are clueless to important issues, their concerns are housing and free meals. As long as we, voters between 20-75 yrs. old continue to have such apathy, we get what we deserve. Out of 26,000 voters in a district, only 6,000 to 8,000 actually vote and they are mostly the elders.
Yes, we need to look into the absentee voting system we have. Perhaps if the ballots have to be notarized it would make it harder for fraud to happen?
Maybe we need to just allow early voting in person for more than 2 weeks, and allow elections to have a mobile polling place that schedules time at nursing homes and senior centers and other places such as condos...then have the clerk of court have staff then to verify the voter was conscious. You can always have a bedside voting machine in those places the unable to walk. But, if you are in an extended care or nursing care facility, you must be certified that you are able to understand a ballot.
Get rid of absentees totally...give them no reason to have them.
Don't forget about the City of Miami district 5 elections. This is a great example of what is going on. Of the 4,000 or so that voted, nearly 50% were absentee ballot and 90% of the absentee ballots were in favor of ousted Commissioner Spence-Jones. It would be relatively simple for the State Attorney to audit a percentage of these votes to make sure they have been properly cast.
Welcome to the world of election fraud. This is what got Angel Gonzalez in trouble in the 90's in connection with the Humberto Hernandez campaign. This is what got Xavier Suarez kicked out of office by a judge when Carollo challenged the absentee ballots accumulated by his campaign. The union are experts at absentee ballot fraud and early voting fraud as well. I will never vote for anyone that gets the backing of any government union, fire and police included.
The problem isn't with the system, the problem is with vulnerable individuals.
A good AB system in a campaign insures that you get a list of AB voters (you pay for that) that have signed up. You then get the date that the ABs are going to be mailed out and you send a reminder about your Candidate so that both arrive at the home at the same time.
You then have volunteers call the person to make sure that a) they received the ballot and b) that they don't have any questions about filling it out.
The ballots have to be signed accross the back so that if you open one it will show and elections is very careful about that.
The problem comes in at the Senior Centers where you have individuals standing over the old people to make sure that they fill in the correct candidate.
You can't bring in large groups of ABs to elections. They have to be mailed in. That was one of the changes after the City of Miami scandal.
But there is a good reason for absentee ballots. Both my parents are frail and they can't go out to vote so this is a great way for them to excercise their right to vote.
Trust me that when they told me they were voting Republican during the Presidential Election I thought about highjaking their ballots. I think they didn't trust me either cause they mailed them out before I got home.
Like I said, they are frail...not stupid.
It really depends on what campaign you're dealing with. On the municipal campaigns I've been involved on in Miami at rather high levels, we NEVER collected absentee ballots. What we would do is go out and get people to request their ballots on request forms, then bring those forms to the elections department. We'd keep copies of those forms, and call to remind people to send them back in once they'd gotten them (chasing ballots). However, ballots are supposed to be signed and sealed. If a ballot appears to have been opened and resealed, the election department will most likely investigate, as that would possibly be tampering.
However, you are correct about absentee ballots. Campaigns do try to deceive each other on how many they have, but I've always accomplished this by not turning in request forms until closer to the deadline.
These scams should be investigated.
This is a very desperate attempt by candidate Mike Suarez to discredit a very well respected man, Willy Gort.
Despite what has been implied here the comments made earlier are false. No one was arrested, investigated or anything of the like. Willy Gorts campaign is being run my very competent and ethical people.
On the other hand, It is very well known that Xavier Suarez (ex Mayor) is running Mike Suarez' campaign for the second time. He was Mike's very first campaign contributor http://www.miamigov.com/City_Clerk/Pages/Elections/CampaignReports10/CampaignTreasurersRpt_S1_MikeSuarez_12_11_09.pdf .
Xavier also ran Mike's Campaign in 2007.
IRONICALLY Xavier's expertise in Mike's campaign is absentee ballot strategy. For those that dont remember, Mayor Xavier Suarez was removed from office in 1998 following an absentee voter fraud investigation http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/05/us/fraud-ruling-invalidates-miami-mayoral-election.html
With Xavier's help in 2007 Mike was successful in getting nearly twice as many absentee votes as he did at the polling places.
This is a desperate attempt on Mikes part to distract attention from his own strategies and affiliations.
This isn't about the Gort or Suarez campaign it is a spin-off onto a very real problem, irregularities in absentee votes. We don't care about the campaign in specific, only the problem that it happened to get us to...
If Mike Suarez is successful he will join his cousin Francis and probably be the first Family Duo on the City Commission. Amazing. The Suarez family will once again regain control of Miami.
That last post was interesting since Joe Carollo is also helping Mike Suarez. How weird is all this? Someone is up to something...call all the absentee voters and tell them NOT to hand over their ballot to anyone! And if they don't know who they should vote for, then don't vote. The majority of the Anglos don't.
In Hialeah you might find the worst offenders. They do it almost in the public eye and still cannot be stopped.
Milly, you're right! That's how Vile Natacha defeated her recall.
Frank Carollo seems so desperate.
perhaps you ought to ask Lester Sola. He never answered my carefully written request for public information. I followed up several times. I stopped asking. I am just going to dust it off if there are problems down the road.
You should resend your concerns to Lester Sola and copy the Ethics Commission. We have some serious voting problems in Miami that are just being ignored. Absentee voting really needs to have a good investigation and analysis done. We have dead voters, people with advanced alzheimer and people that did not vote voting. We have a problem.
The farming of absentee ballots is a very lucrative cottage industry laden with abuse. If you look through a candidate's expenditure report, pay special attention to those consultants paid for "community outreach." Does a catered lunch at a senior center constitute "outreach?" One should also look to large expenditures for postage stamps, particularly when nearly all direct political mail features a postal permit.
This isn't to say that all candidates play these games, but one is one too many.
El que invento la ley invento la trampa
Absentee system should return strictly to its original intention for people who suffer from a SERIOUSLY debiltating medical condition, are in the armed forces or are traveling on election day. Everyone else has to show up on election day, its really not that hard considering folks in some countries vote under death threats or hail of gunfire.
Until then these shenanigans will continue.
Not everything goes on a candidates expenditure report. A lot of cash was handed out this past election season. No way of tracing. As for spending on postage, not every mail mailed are direct political mailers.
The political insiders know that in a very competitive election, the absentee voters will decide the race. This is very true in election contests where there are many candidates running. In a way, its like having cash in the bank, or a head start before the counting begins. So the insiders will all quitely have very aggressive absentee ballot campaigns and real voting numbers, while the person who is new to the game will have nothing except "running to help the community". On election night when all is revealed, everyone except the insiders are stunned with the results because they knew going into election day they had a2,000, or a 5,000, or a 10,000 vote edge. Beyond financial contributions, that is one of the reasons why it is very difficult to unseat an incumbent.
The particular senior citizens that let people take their ballot and let people fill them out are dumb. My 102 year old motherinlaw knows enough not to let anyone mess with her ballot. Why don't you put your energy to helping seniors UNDERSTAND the scam rather than focus on me. I served my country in two wars, what about you?
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