Court challenge to come on AB tainted election

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Ladra smells a court challenge.

Not only is there one candidate, backed by at least one employee union, but perhaps at least two candidates from Tuesday’s ballot considering a legal challenge to the election based on the evident absentee ballot fraud that may indicate wider electoral malfeasance.

Commission Chairman Joe Martinez told Ladra before he left for a few days’ vacation Wednesday that he would ask a judge to review the absentee ballots — all of them — in the race he lost to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, if someone would help him pay the legal costs. Without the ABs, Gimenez does not reach the 50% plus one threshold he needs to win without a runoff. And a runoff is something that could ensure democracy prevails in the end. PBA President John Rivera said he would be willing to find an attorney and lend some help, but he expects other unions to pitch in.

And Miami-Dade Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia said he is talking to attorneys already about a challenge to termed-out State Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who won solely by absentee and a very slim margin. The 51-49 percent victory turned out to be by absentee ballot only, after Garcia won both early voting (16,674 to 15,354) and election day counts 48,119 to 46,636). Lopez-Cantera, who was at the Gimenez victory party Tuesday night, and they share the same fundraising guru, Bryan Goldmeier, and many of the same financial supporters, such as lobbyists Vicky Garcia-Toledo and her husband he lobbyist wife of Gimenez driver/confident Ralph Garcia-Toledo.

Garcia has a better case, even though Ladra thinks he should call other candidates and make it a class action lawsuit. Lopez-Cantera has worked with Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador in the past and may have learned a few things. Or else perhaps Tirador worked for his ballot through Norman Braman, who contributed at least $5,000 in bundled totals for CLC and has had Tirador and her gypsy sidekick, Sasha In Training Vanessa Brito, working for him. What is not undeniable is that Lopez-Cantera — who raised nearly $250,000, according to the latest reports, compared to $100,000 by the incumbent — got a much more disproportionate, backwards, support in ABs — by a whopping 43,901 to 36,116. Nobody can tell me that total shift in the pendulum is just a coincidence or the result of early campaigning, as Lopez-Cantera says in a Miami Herald story.

Garcia went on Oscar Haza Wednesday night and said that it was not about holding on to his seat. It was about ending the AB machinery once and for all. Ladra siente un airesito en su alma. He also said that most of the ABs were in, you guessed it, Hialeah — where the absentee ballot scandal erupted and is finally under investigation with the same ol’ suspects tied to the same old Ballot Bandidos group. No, I do not mean the Deisy Cabreras and Sergio “El Tio” Robainas of the world, referring to the boleteros — including former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina‘s uncle — already charged in the fraud scandal. A third woman, the secretary of Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban “Stevie El Bobo” Bovo, a former colleague of CLC’s in the state house, has been questioned about the 164 ballots delivered to the commissioner’s office — of which, of course, he knows nothing about, ahem — but has not been charged (read: is cooperating fully; dominos dropping soon). Not her. No, I am referring to the band of Hialeah electeds implicated in this mess, some of whom have admitted having the boleteros on their campaign. They include State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez and his pal Hialeah Councilwoman Vivian “I’ll Notarize That” Casals-Muñoz, Robaina’s sister-in-law, protegé and notary public for his illicit loans.

They also include Bovo, who in last year’s nearly uncontested commission run to replace the recalled Natacha Seijas, paid Pedros $2,000 for “campaign work,” for which he also paid Hialeah Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez‘ personal boletera Emelina Llanes $650. It’s in the campaign reports. I can print them out for you officers and prosecutors if you like. They also show payments to Tirador for almost $50,000 of weeks one through four of “grassroots” work and “voter outreach” — terms used as code for AB operations. You could find dozens of workers who did “campaign work” or “get out the vote,” another code term — sometimes whole families collecting ballots with three and four last names at the same address. It’s not rocket science. The family that frauds together, bonds together. It is likely that the effort wasn’t even for him — just like this time. This is how those tactics work. His AB machinery works its magic for someone else, probably State Rep. Jose Oliva, whose sign was in Cabrera’s balcony with that of Gonzalez and newly elected Republican nominee for state house district 103, Manny Diaz, Jr., the hand-picked puppet of that Hialeah caucus.

And Ladra cannot believe the canvassing board approved all but four of those ballots because the signatures matched. The signatures matched? Are you kidding me? Have they not seen that people are being coerced to vote for particular candidates by the very boleteros who collect their ballots? Have they not heard how people don’t know who they voted for? Of course their signatures match. They signed it after El Tio Robaina or helpful Miss Deisy filled the ballot out. Are the people at the Elections Department totally ignorant? Is nobody going to say anything? Hello?

Oh yeah, it is totally inconvenient for any of the people in power to do anything about this, since this helps keep them in power. But if the media keeps the pressure on and law enforcement is forced to intervene, this cancer that has been plaguing us for a long time might be cut out. Sure, we’ll need some chemo now and then to keep it out but it’s a start.

And we have to thank, again, P.I. Joe Carrillo, whatever his motivations, for taking great risk and going through some dramatic crap by busting this ballot business wide open (more on that later) — whatever the consequences. As someone who equally does not have an agenda — as evidenced by the fact that our favored candidate was tainted in the investigatory process and we still have to expose it — he has single-handedly done more to end AB fraud than anyone I know. And I know a lot of people who have worked hard to end AB fraud.

But this involves much more than just straight out absentee ballot fraud, and therein lies the problem.

We have a system where that has mushroomed into the bussing of patients from Hispanic-owned medical centers — you know the ones; they contribute a bunch, too — and adult activity cafeterias, who get pastelitos and slate cards on the ride to the polls. It’s about public housing residents who are outright blackmailed or infer it because of the climate and vote one way because they don’t want to lose benefits — or are promised a home for a relative. It’s about campaigns going through the lists of absentee ballots that went out and crossing out the ones that they requested on behalf of voters, so they can go pick up the other ones dressed as their counter volunteers and throw them away. Is Ladra the only one that finds it strange that of the 160,0000-some ballots requested, only 90,000 came back? Doesn’t anybody else imagine a pile of them in the garbage somewhere or the trunk of someone’s car or a government office? I know I am not the only one who has heard the stories and it’s not so far fetched, looking at how this has played out and electeds are involved.

Ladra has a theory that Anamary Pedrosa, the secretary from Bovo’s office who supposedly took it upon herself to collect ballots from El Tio Robaina — yeah, riiiiight — has cooperated so fully that she wore a wire for the cops when she went back to cry about her questioning to the Bovos — because Stevies wife is the one that reportedly wears the pants in that government office. And so maybe, hopefully, the wire picked up on them — because the Hialeah hoodlums have been doing this so long that they feel empowered and, indeed, entitled — going off on her to get her to resign the next day, backdate the resignation letter, and bite the bullet.

“Stevie can’t help you if he’s not commissioner,” Ladra imagines Mrs. Bovo telling the 25-year-old they are throwing under the bus. “We’ll get you an attorney,” she said, referring to JC Planas, Bovo’s attorney — and the attorney for State Rep. Gonzalez and his crew of Ballot Bandidos, and Jose Felix “One More Pepe” Diaz, who trounced Ana Rivas-Logan and also did much, but much, better in absentee ballots than in early voting or Election Day counts.

The amount of doubt on the ABs and all the conspiracy the scandal implies is hardly anything to sneeze at, as some in the Gimenez campaign seem to want to do in order to leave it behind them. There is just too much other unlawful or unethical activity permeating our electoral process. This could be the tip of the iceberg on a cottage industry operated via organized fraud, as I said tonight on Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera‘s show. He was kind enough to invite me and said some very nice things that made me feel he’s not as bad as I thought he was — or he’s come around. Either way, we talked about how the media — thanks to him and people like Pedro Sevcec and The Miami Herald’s Enrique Flor — has helped keep the pressure on prosecutors and public corruption detectives. And we have to continue. We can’t stop now that the election is over. We can’t stop if — God forbid — some kid is shot by a cop or some lady is killed by a hit-and-run driver or we get a hurricane. The media has to stay on top of this because it’s the only way we’re going to see it through to it’s rightful end.

We need the state government to intervene with an FDLE task force into the absentee ballot fraud going on in Hialeah and maybe in other parts — as Carrillo hinted he had other areas videotaped as well.

Maybe we need the federal government, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, to get involved.

Or, if they continue to stay out of it, maybe what we need, after all, is a judge.