Absentee ballot reform: The time is now

Meanwhile, Tallahassee lawmakers have done everything they can to loosen laws so that ABs are easier to steal. After the Miami Herald used the witness signatures on the envelopes to identify ballot brokers in the 1997 Miami election — someone who signed 600 ballots is a little more than just zealous, right? — legislators removed that requirement, saying it was not verified by the elections department so it was moot. Moot? Really?

Authorities know Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador and her reported use of the Hialeah Housing Authority as a veritable vote bank. They know about Emelina Llanes and a bunch of others, including a Hialeah Gardens dentist and the mother of Sweetwater Mayor Manny Maroño, who is also a recently-elected councilwoman, and who was paid for AB work by Gov. Rick Scott in his campaign. They know about a woman named N. Jonsa who calls herself the “Queen Of Absentee Ballots” on her business cards. They have Cabrera’s business card, too. On which she wrote, “call me when your ballot arrives. I work all elections.” That’s how descarado they are and this is.

They also have Cabrera’s notebooks, which names names. They should have Cabrera’s and Emelina’s phone records, which may indicate calls to Hialeah Councilwoman Vivian Casals-Muñoz and Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez, respectively, and who knows who else in the call log.

In fact, some people suspect that is exactly why the investigation and prosecution of these cases is slow, at best: The political connections and ramifications could be endless. Some even suspect that it will implicate Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle, who, to her credit, did assign the Cabrera case to the Broward SAO after ties to her campaign manager, Al Lorenzo, were exposed.

Why stop there, though? Tio Robaina, Anamary Pedrosa — who apparently got immunity before she was even handcuffed — are part of the same network. The whole thing needs to be investigated by an outside agency at the state or, better, federal level.

But let’s stop hoping and praying for that divine legal intervention that doesn’t seem to ever come. Let’s just stop the madness. We need reform that would return ABs to their rightful place in the system — restricted use by military, people overseas or someone truly incapacitated. Even though it is certainly more convenient, and I know lots of people who vote absentee — Ladra even took advantage of it herself — there is too much room for abuse and the risks for fraud outweigh any possible perks.

Even when AB campaigns are done “legitimately,” when absentee voters are not manipulated and/or robbed of their vote, absentee ballots are being misused by strategists and consultants, if not candidates themselves, at an alarming rate. Just look at the numbers. AB votes have dramatically increased in Miami-Dade, breaking records every subsequent year, and I suspect across the state.

Just take Hialeah, where AB collection has become kind of a sport, and where champion Robaina won both mayoral elections in 2005 and 2009. In 2005, he had 3,282 people cast absentee ballots for him. Four years later, he almost tripled that number to 9,147.

Now, do you really think that all these people take it upon themselves to request absentee ballots? Of course not. The requests are part of any political campaign now. Candidates and their teams will urge you to request an absentee ballot to generate a number of “identified supporter” votes. They already had a target number of how many votes they need to win months earlier. “So, are there any other people at the home who are registered to vote?” They will want everyone. Then they follow up with their “identified supporters” list and call you to see if you got the absentee ballot, but they already know you did because they know when the AB’s “drop” — or go out into the mail. And then they urge you to “vote now,” fill it in, with our name of course, and send it. Now. Today. And then they will robocall you to death to remind you.

Then they put a checkmark by your name on the “identified supporters” list.

But are these voters really engaged?

Campaign consultants and political pundits might argue that absentee ballots campaigns are good because they increase turnout. But is it real participation? Or is it just a body count? When many of the people voting absentee are not even cognizant of their own name and do not know who they voted for? When some people are voting for the person who “sent me” the absentee ballot and then can’t remember who or, God forbid, why?

It’s a disservice and an insult to everyone who does their due diligence and votes responsibly.

Another thing we need to do is make the candidate responsible –whether they knew about it or not. The compartmentalization of campaigns does make it plausible that some people handle “get out the vote” or “ground operations” — which are code words for AB campaigns — while others manage phone banks or work on the messaging. But that gives candidates plausible deniability. We should make them accountable the same way perpetrators of other crimes are guilty of felony murder should someone be killed while they are robbing a bank, for instance. Same concept: Candidates should pay for their consultants’ mistakes.

Maybe then we’d see less AB fraud.

After all, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez “didn’t know” Cabrera was collecting ballots for him on instructions of his new Hialeah hoodlum friends. Bovo “didn’t know” that his office aide, which he saw daily and had worked and been paid to work in his earlier campaign, was collecting ballots, likely for his friend and ally, newly-elected State Rep. Manny Diaz, Jr. Now, Garcia “didn’t know” that his longtime strategist, Jeffrey Garcia, had concocted an illegal scheme to generate AB requests via a computer virus.

Really? Really?

When does the broken record stop?