More than 187,000 absentee ballots were mailed to Miami-Dade voters Tuesday morning. They should arrive in 
mailboxes by the end of the week.
It’s more than 190,000 if you count the overseas absentees sent earlier this month. That’s up from the 165,000 or so ABs that went out in the 2012 primary, which was more than went out in 2010, and so on and so on and so on.
“Absentee voting becomes more popular with each election and continues to be a secure voting method for our voters,” said Supervisor of Elections Penelope Townsley, though Ladra is not as confident about the secure part.
“It has never been easier or more convenient to vote absentee from the comfort of your home,” Townsley added.
And it has never been easier or more convenient for candidates and their campaign operatives to target an increasingly larger number of voters. And who are increasingly relying on absentee votes to win elections.
Everyone from the hopefuls for property appraiser to the judicial wannabes, to incumbent commissioners and their challengers, to the political operatives in the Republican primary of one of the most closely watched congressional district races in the country will be counting the number of absentees returned each day as their phone banks call AB voters, who will also be barraged with campaign mailers, to remind them who they should pick.
Most of this is done legally. But there could be shenanigans. There have been before. We have pockets of Miami-Dade famous for their boletero or ballot collecting cottage industries — Hialeah, North Miami, Little Havana, Homestead.
Read related story: Reward: PBA offfers $10K for tips on absentee ballot fraud
This year, the Dade PBA is offering a $10,000 reward for anyone with information that leads to the conviction for absentee ballot fraud. And one candidate, former Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia — who lost his job in 2012 to 500 or so absentee ballots but won on election day and in early voting — is hiring a private detective to follow people like Deisy Cabrera around.
Cabrera, if you remember, is the boletera caught red handed picking up ballots and taking them to the Hialeah campaign office for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Tainted Boy” Gimenez. She and boletero Sergio “El Tio” Robaina — uncle to former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, who had taken more than 60 ballots to the office of Commissioner Esteban Bovo — were given a year probation and can’t ply their trade in this primary. They can’t work again until the general, so the P.I. will have to follow other well-known boleteros and boleteras who should be on notice, which only means they get paid more now.
Investigators are still looking into the alleged absentee ballot fraud committed by two men working for the failed Homestead mayoral campaign of Mark Bell, the husband of Miami-Dade Commissioner Lynda Bell, who is running for re-election in the most heated of four commission races this year. Ladra hears that case — which has been transferred from the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office — is near completion. If there are arrests in these next few days, it could hurt Bell’s chances at some of those 14,995 absentee ballots going out today to mailboxes in county commission District 8 (more on that later).
Read related story: First absentee ballot fraud claim arises — in Homestead
In Congressional District 26, where there are four Republicans vying for a chance to go up against U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia in 
November — five if you count former Congressman David Rivera, who has supposedly “suspended campaigning” but is still on the ballot and could be back like that flu you can’t shake. And they’ll be vying for the 22,775 Republican absentee ballots in the district that goes from Southwest 8th Street to Key West.
Monroe County mailed a little more than 11,000 absentee ballots last week, according to their Supervisor of Elections R. Joyce Griffin. That’s also higher than the 10,050 mailed in the 2012 primary. Of those, 4,953 are Republican, 3,954 are Dems and the rest are Independent and NPAs and Libertarians and what not.
“Republicans tend to vote more than Democrats do,” Griffin told Ladra.
Maybe that’s why both Miami-Dade School Board Member Carlos Curbelo and Cutler Bay Mayor Ed “Mac” MacDougall have spent some time campaigning there. Curbelo even unleashed a new video last week with Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who used to cover the Keys two years ago, and told Keys TV viewers to vote for the School Board Member because he is an “education innovator” (I’m not even sure what that is but I bet he is not) and “a small businessman” (well, he is a lobbyist who doesn’t reveal his clients because he put his company in his wife’s name, so we don’t know how small he is).
Griffin explained that they send out a mailer to every voter asking if they’d like to receive an absentee ballot. So candidates don’t have to. Smart.
In Miami-Dade Dems still have an advantage with 76,691 absentee ballots mailed out to blue voters. The local GOP is not far behind, 
though, with 72,994 ABs out to Republican voters. And the collective of other parties, including card-carrying NPAs like Ladra, is a whopping 41,273 AB strong.
Didn’t get one? Don’t fret.
You can still request an absentee ballot through Aug. 20 either by phone (305-499-VOTE or 8683), send a request in writing or go in person to the office on Northwest 87th Avenue in Doral or even request one online at www.iamelectionready.org, a new website that has been changed at the most inopportune time.
But only one for yourself and an immediate family member in your home. You cannot request an absentee ballot for anyone else. Don’t go making the same mistakes that two campaign workers for Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez‘s abandoned mayoral bid made but submitting online requests for other voters who said they could. Still illegal. That’s why they had to plea guilty to misdemeanor charges of illegally submitting absentee ballot requests online (which Ladra didn’t even know was a crime) and got no jail time in exchange for a year probation.
Miami-Dade Elections Department want voters to remember the following:
- The Elections Department must receive your ballot no later than 7:00 p.m. on Election Day, August 26, 2014.
Ensure you sign the voter certificate on the outside of the absentee ballot envelope.- The signature on the envelope must match the signature the Elections Department has on record. Voters are encouraged to update their signature by submitting a voter registration application, which can be printed from the Elections Department website or by calling the County’s 3-1-1 Answer Center. Be sure to check the “signature update” box.
- Do not allow anyone to mark your ballot unless you are unable to do so because of blindness, disability or failure to read or write.
- There is no reason to give your ballot to anyone other than someone you have specifically named as your designee with the Elections Department.
- Return postage is paid for Miami-Dade County. There is no need for someone to mail your ballot for you.
For more information, please call 3-1-1 or visit www.iamelectionready.org, where you can also track your ballot to see if it got there — or was hijacked en route.
More absentee ballots on their way to voters today added by Ladra on
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