The use of absentee or mail-in ballots has always been a concern in Miami-Dade, where veteran campaign consultants have manipulated these votes, particularly with elderly voters, for years. But a month from our first election in the time of COVID19, the Aug. 18 absentee vote will likely break records.
According to Deputy Supervisor of Elections Suzy Trutie, the department mailed out 332,000 domestic absentee ballots to voters on Thursday (1,300 were mailed overseas on July 1). That’s more 
than the 305,000 people who voted absentee in the 2016 presidential election in November.
And this is for August!
And that’s just the first batch. There were about 376,000 vote-by-mail ballot requests as of Friday, Trutie said. Voters can continue to request the mail-in ballots through Aug. 8 and the county will continue mailing them in separate batches through Aug. 10, she added.
But what’s kinda shocking is the speed with which the requests have poured in since Miami-Dade became the global epicenter of the COVID19 pandemic. The 376K is more than 10,000 additional requests since just Monday’s total of 364,465 requests. Yes, that’s 10,000 more in four days.
Read related: Alex Penelas bashes Bovo, wins first Spanish-language mayoral debate
In comparison, the list grew by just over 10,000 from late April when Ladra first asked for the figure, and it was 268,775, to mid June, when there were a reported 279,299 requests.
“There has been a steady increase in requests and we think it’s definitely correlated to the COVID19 crisis,” Trutie said.
So, people are getting nervous about voting in person. That and the big push for absentee voting by campaigns, the county — which sent a mailer weeks ago inviting 700,000 voters to request absentee ballots — and both the Democratic and, to a lesser degree, Republican parties has apparently worked.
President Donald Trump‘s statements about believing that there would be absentee ballot fraud likely affected the requests. Democrats have outpaced requests by Republicans almost 2 to 1. As of Monday, there were 164,076 mail-in ballot requests from Dems compared to 108,752 from Republicans. This might prove to be an issue for Commissioner Esteban Bovo, who is casting himself as the only conservative candidate.
At least 91,637 requests are from “other,” which mostly means NPAs, so they could be crucial in the non-partisan votes like county commission, school board and judges. Some campaigns, like that of former county mayor Alex Penelas, who is running for the office again, started chasing the absentee ballots as soon
as the first voters got them on Friday.
If COVID19 cases continue to rise in Miami-Dades County, it stands to reason that so too will the number of AB requests due to a growing resistance to in-person voting, which may be complicated because of social distancing requirements and scary because there are a lot of surfaces you really shouldn’t touch.
At least 27 polling places won’t be available as they are assisted living facilities or have withdrawn their permission, as some of those facilities also want as few visitors as possible. Elections Supervisor Christina White told county commissioners last month that those voters would be redirected to existing nearby precincts and that there would be signage at the sites.
Trutie told Ladra that the changes are really no different than what they did in the March primary, when 35 polling places were not available. “The changes we have now, they’re on par with every election,” Trutie said.
As always, voters will be able to vote in-person during early voting, which starts Aug. 3 at any of 23 sites countywide. People can also drop their absentee ballots there, Trutie said, and unlike election day, voters don’t have to go to their assigned precinct. Click here to view the sites and schedule.
“You don’t even have to get out of your car. We want to make it as easy as possible,” she added, explaining that there would be staffed drop boxes for voters to drop their ballots in. Can Ladra suggest video cameras, too? You know, just in case someone shows up with a trunk full or bags of ballots. Better 
yet, let’s hope law enforcement has one of their election fraud task forces getting ready for what will likely be a mad dash for absentees.
Read related: Commissioner Bovo’s office was boletero central
They should keep a close eye on Bovo’s mayoral campaign. His district office staffer in Hialeah was arrested in 2012 for storing ballots brought to the office in the trunk of her car — and he is going to need every absentee ballot he can get in this race, especially after his party has done him a great disservice by making mail-in voting suspicious.
On Election Day Aug. 18, any absentee ballot still in a voter’s possession will have to be taken to the elections department in Doral before 7 p.m. to count — although that might defeat the purpose.
That’s the same day that we find out how many people voted by mail. Because more important than the number of absentee ballots that are mailed out, is the number of ABs the county gets back.
Absentee ballots will be bigger than ever for elections in time of COVID19 added by Ladra on
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