UPDATED: The number of absentee ballots returned so far across Miami-Dade for this Aug. 26 primary is 77,500, far 
less than the 210,000 ABs that have been requested as of Thursday, according to the Miami-Dade Elections Department.
But it is almost four times as many votes as in-person ballots cast by early voters. And many think that if turnout is also poor on election day, ABs will again decide the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser’s race and the many countywide judicial races on the ballot.
There have been law enforcement agencies, a State Attorney’s Office task force and multiple private detectives on the street — in Sweetwater, Hialeah (where 9,100 ABs and were cast as of Thursday), North Miami and Little Havana mostly — since the absentee ballots dropped, and Ladra has 
heard that there is an investigation into a bunch of ballots from Sweetwater that were dropped at a postal mail facility a couple of weeks ago. SAO spokesman Ed Griffith would not confirm. “It’s not like we’re going to tell you,” he told Ladra.
But according to two sources, there is a subpoena for video from the camera outside the facility. Other than that, however, there is little AB activity on the street — at least where the usual suspects are concerned.
There hasn’t been the gotcha many of us expected.
Day after day, night after night, watchers are going home frustrated and empty handed. We don’t know if this lack of AB activity means that the recent arrests and prosecution of ballot brokers — plus that $10,000 reward from the PBA — put a chill on the cottage industry or if it means that the professionals who get paid a pretty penny for chasing ABs have changed their methods of operation.
Read related story: PBA offers $10,000 reward for tips on absentee ballot fraud
Private detective Joe Carrillo — who busted Hialeah boletera Deisy Cabrera in 2012 — worked the first couple of weeks tailing people who have been identified as ballot brokers in Hialeah and he got nothing. But I mean nuh-thing. Like he was looking in the wrong place.
“The extremely well known boleteras were not even sleeping at home,” Carrillo told Ladra Friday morning, referring specifically to Emelina Llanes, a collector of Hialeah Housing residents’ ballots, who he said did not go in or out of her house for four days in a row. And that her car was parked outside. “She wasn’t there.”
Carrillo said he was hired by a private individual, not a candidate. But his target is definitely former State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, who is termed out of state office and will just jump back into the Hialeah council race if he loses this one. That is, if he doesn’t have the ABs sewn up.
“He has stolen the election once. He will steal it again,” said Carrillo, who investigated Gonzalez after his 2004 win in the Hialeah city elections.
The P.I. has already done a little leg work. He said he talked to a man on the former State Rep’s campaign reports who was paid $2,100 for what he says are AB collections. The campaign reports say Ramon Alonso was paid for GOTV and “campaign work” and Carrillo says the senior told him he was putting up signs. “But he’s an old man in public housing. How many signs is he going to put out? And where? In the hallway,” Carrillo asked, noting that the big payment of $1,000 came just as ABs dropped.
Seems like something that needs to be investigated further.
Gonzalez also has several other GOTV expenses that look like traditional ballot brokers, including $1,500 to Timothy Milton, who has long collected ballots in the south end of the county for years and who put Gonzalez on his shady slate card paid for by a bogus PAC.
Read related story: Shady campaign slate cards are staple of early voting
Former Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia — who lost by absentees in 2012 to former State Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who was then tapped to be the Hispanic No. 2 to Gov. Rick Scott — told me that he feared he could lose the same way again.
“One thing that has me more at ease is that many of the absentee ballots that went out are for people who requested them for convenience, not for elderly voters,” Garcia said, since we all know that senior voters are the ones who get taken advantage of by AB brokers.
“I haven’t heard of any stories when I go out to the comedores,” Garcia said about the senior centers.
“But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to keep vigilant so that the same thing doesn’t happen that happened in 2012.”
There is vigilance also in at least two of the county commission races.
In District 12, where there have been 6,165 absentee ballots returned as of Thursday, the PAC for Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz sent a mailer a few weeks ago warning people not to give their ABs to anyone.
They may as well have put a picture of Sweetwater Councilwoman Isolina Maroño, mother of convicted former Mayor Manny “Maraña” Maroño, on the outside, seeing as how she is the number one boletera in that city. And the fear is she will work against Diaz for not standing by her boy when he was arrested last year on bribery charges stemming from a sting where he helped pass bogus grant applications for kickbacks.
In District 8, there had been 6,152 absentee ballots cast as of Thursday afternoon, according to figures Ladra obtained from the Elections Department. Folks with Daniella Levine Cava’s campaign worry that the same thing could happen that happened last year during the Homestead mayoral race, when two workers for Commissioner Lynda Bell’s husband Mark Bell‘s campaign were caught filling in ballots for a family — with the wrong candidates bubbled in.
While Ladra keeps hearing that there will be charges filed in that case very soon, a spokesman with the State Attorney’s Office indicated that, while he was not confirming anything, there may not be any movement until after the election — so as not to have an effect on the results.
How convenient for the incumbent.
And how slow for the rest of us.
Absentee ballots beat early votes, but activity quiet added by Ladra on
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