Absentee Ballot Fraud in Southern Florida

Anonymous

Sun, 08/26/2012 - 05:49

Campaign Finance

In this year of endless talk about voter fraud, there is not all
that much talk about one area of fraud that has actually been proven
to exist, and to make a difference: absentee ballot fraud. This kind of fraud even comes
with its own profession, the absentee ballot broker (boletera in
southern Florida). 
 
Boleteras are hired by local campaigns to go into nursing homes,
assisted living facilities, and sometimes homes to help people fill
out absentee ballots. The question is, how much help do they give? A
little help is a good deed, a lot of help is fraud.

According to two opinion pieces in the Miami Herald, <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/04/2930389/why-use-a-boletera-when-t…; target="”_blank”">one
earlier this month</a> and <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/26/2966653/absentee-vote-fraud-destr…; target="”_blank”">another
today</a>, as well as <a href="http://www.politicalcortadito.com/2012/08/02/hialeah-boletera-is-arrest…; target="”_blank”">a
Political Cortadito blog post</a>, a Hialeah boletera was caught
with twelve absentee ballots and charged with absentee-ballot fraud,
involving the signature on one of the ballots, and two counts of
violating a new county ordinance that makes it illegal for anyone to
have more than two ballots belonging to other voters. 
 
One of the exciting things about this sort of fraud is that, unlike
the other kinds of fraud and attacks on fraud, this fraud, and the
attacks on it, are bipartisan. One of the opinion pieces (by a
Herald columnist) says that it is Republicans who are doing it, and
the other, by a losing Republican candidate, blames his opponent for
winning the election via the use of boleteras. In other words,
this is the real thing. 
 
But what can be done about it? The losing candidate wants to file
suits challenging the absentee vote. The columnist wants to
strengthen the laws, to make it harder for boleteras to operate. But
what would this entail? 
 
One thing would be to prevent payment to boleteras. If it's a civic
project, why not have it be done by volunteers? And why should the
volunteers work for campaigns, who have an interest in coercing and
abusing the elderly to get more votes? Even volunteers can put
pressure on the elderly and others who are open to persuasion or
coercion, or simply don't know what's going on. 
 
Perhaps what is required is volunteers who are selected and
supervised by truly nonpartisan organizations, or volunteers who
travel in pairs, each from a different party. 
 
In addition, perhaps each nursing home or other facility could be
required to make a list of individuals there who are clearly
incapable of making a rational voting decision, due to dementia and
other diseases. A boletera would be required to check all
ballots they get signed against it before they leave the facility. They must discard the ballots of anyone on the list. 
 
Enforcement is very difficult. In this case, according to <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/17/2955995/hialeah-activist-i-hired-…; target="”_blank”">a
Miami Herald article last week</a>, the investigation was done
privately, paid for personally by a firefighter union leader. The
investigator tipped off the police. This kind of enforcement politicizes the issue. 
 
A law prohibiting anyone from having more than two ballots belonging
to other voters makes enforcement easier, because there is no issue
of coercion. However, such a law is a problem for people actually
trying to help people vote, if they are on their way to post the
ballots. Such a law throws out the baby with the bath water. 
 
The other problem with such a law is that it places the principal
onus on the boletera rather than the campaign that hired her. Here's <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/21/2962056/campaign-scapegoats.html&…; target="”_blank”">a
letter to the Herald this week</a> that speaks to this issue:<blockquote>

The boleteras de Hialeah are
certainly not without sin, yet they are scapegoats who have taken
the heat for some self-righteous client-beneficiaries, who
willingly bought tainted goods. They got caught doing what
everyone knows is historically an established part of campaigning
in Miami-Dade County. 
 
Boleteras are everywhere, not
exclusive to Hialeah politics or to people of Cuban descent. They
go by other colloquial names depending on their ethnicity, where
they live and operate. 
 
They are usually well-known for their successful work and sought
after by politicians and their operatives to do the
bottom-of-the-barrel job it takes to scour for absentee ballots
come every campaign season. 
 
So long as the system allows this to happen, candidates will
continue to appreciate the fruits of their labor. That is, until
the boleteras get caught; then the
usual games begin. Everyone is shocked, arrests are made and boleteras are expected to sing like
canaries and bring the big fish down. 
 
The whole show is hypocritical. The ones who should be arrested
are those who used these vulnerable women for their own gain —
only to throw them under the bus. —Mikki
Canton, Coral Gables</blockquote>

This is not a tempest in a teapot. According to another Herald article, one third of the votes in this month's Miami-Dade County primary election were done via absentee ballot. And they made a difference. For example, in the county property appraiser race, one candidate received more votes in early voting and on election day, and yet lost the race due to his opponent's lead of more than 7,700 absentee votes. 
 
This is where the real local voting problems are. The other "fraud" is more about preventing voting than about improper voting. 
 
Robert Wechsler 
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics 
 
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Absentee Ballot Fraud in Southern Florida

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