Voter registration deadline on Dolphins deal another dupe?

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Talk about manipulation.

We posted the last piece on the referendum and why Ladra doesn’t like it before we realized that the last day to register to vote in the special, shotgun May 14 election on the Miami Dolphins public funding stadium deal is Monday.

That’s right, only five days after it was approved by our Miami-Dade Commission.

A coincidence?

Or to we add that to the list of seeming disigenuous bits or bait and switches that Ladra and opponents of this complicated and rushed deal think the Dolphins and their main champion, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, have known about or  intentionally.

Because there is no way anyone can tell me that someone in their organization was not acutely aware of that deadline. And since they have already been working on the campaign to get it passed, there is no way anyone can tell me that they have not done any voter registration drives of the kind of votes they want, anyway.

And it certainly helps to them that there could be no opposition-mounted registration drives.

Election Spokeswoman Christina White said that the deadline is mandated by state law at 29 days prior to any election.

White told Ladra that there are 1,269,116 registered voters in Miami-Dade. Or there were Friday afternoon. Wonder how many more there will be by midnight Monday, because, while registration forms mailed and post-marked by Monday will be accepted, the county department on 87th Avenue in Doral will stay open until midnight to take new registrations in person.

But, no, that is not a special favor to the mayor and his Dolphins pals. In fact, it may be called equal time.

“We try our best to treat all elections the same,” White told me. “You want to afford the voters the same opportunity.”