Sister of absentee voter denies signing ballot collected in Hialeah

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Thursday, 08.02.12
Sister of absentee voter denies signing ballot collected in Hialeah

A review of some absentee ballots at the center of an inquiry into possible election fraud shows that at least one seems to have a forged signature.

By Melissa Sanchez, Enrique Flor and Alfonso Chardy
[e-mail]

Of the 31 absentee ballots that have become the focus of an investigation into possible election fraud in Hialeah, at least one appears to have a forged signature.

The ballot belonged to Zulema Gómez, 81, who entered a nursing home five months ago suffering from Alzheimer’s and a brain tumor. On the ballot’s envelope someone wrote: “The lady is my sister. I sign like this because she has arthritis + she has difficult signing. Thank you.”

However, her sister, Olga Gómez, said Wednesday that she never wrote that message. Two weeks ago, she said, Daisy Cabrera took the blank absentee ballot and promised to go to the nursing home in Miami Springs and deliver it to Zulema. The sisters have known Cabrera for four years, when she visited them during the 2008 presidential election to help them with their absentee ballots.

“She was going to the (nursing) home,” said Gómez, 68. “I don’t know if she actually went, but it’s a lie that I signed that.”


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/02/2926694/sister-of-absentee-voter-denies.html#storylink=cpy

[marshall]

1. Does the woman have another sister?

Or maybe she is in a religious group that calls each other brother and sister?

[niceguy]

2. I thought

Voter fraud was a myth that it simply didn't happen......

[valerief]

3. It doesn't, except in cases where Republicans do it. The big theft is election fraud via

voter suppression and super-secret proprietary software voting machines that flip votes, always from Dem to Rep. Read bradblog.com.

[niceguy]

4. Then I guess the

Op must be simply mistaken. Maybe the sister is suffering from dementia and forgot she signed it....

[valerief]

5. This stuff is where the real fraud occurs.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0601-34.htm

[frylock]

7. this is one instance..

why don't you dig up some links and show us where this is happening on a routine basis. take your time, i have all day.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

8. No one is saying voter fraud is a myth.

We are saying voter fraud on a scale any more than completely insignificant amounts is a myth.

We are saying don't disenfranchise 25-50,000 thousand legitimate voters just to catch a handful of assholes playing shenanigans with friend's and relatives votes.


Election fraud (of which repiglicker enacted voter suppression is a major factor) is where all the dirty work takes place.

[NYC_SKP]

12. It's an interesting and provocative reply in this thread, don't you think?

I don't want to be guilty of accusing anyone of anything, mind you, but it smells funny.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

14. Yep. I figured as much. They got 'em while i was at lunch.

[LanternWaste]

9. A statistical aberration celebrated on the news those few times it happens

Much like a shark attack. A statistical aberration celebrated on the news those few times it happens (much as when Ann Coulter was found guilty of voter fraud). However, I do realize that many major politicians see the isolated shark attack as a de-facto end-of-the-world scenario that should, by the grace of God, result in new laws costing billions of dollars designed to prevent any more shark attacks from ever happening in Nebraska once and for all.


Although I imagine you may even have convinced yourself that you once actually did hear someone say "voter fraud never happens, never has happened, and never will happen..."; and although you won't be able to substantiate your claim of "myth" rather than statistical aberration, I have no doubt you honestly believe you heard it sometime... from someone... in that place with the thing outside that it is indeed, a myth and never happens.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

10. Ask PA officials about that. Apparently they couldn't produce a single instance

of this happening in the whole state. Even though they've been pimping that argument to pass yet another unnecessary law.

[arely staircase]

11. say hi to everyone else in the sleeper cell for me nt

[alfredo]

13. Voter fraud is a broad category. The type of voter fraud addressed by the voter ID laws

wouldn't address this form of fraud or vote buying. Voter impersonation which is addressed by the voter ID laws is very rare. The reason voter impersonation is rare, there is no real financial gain but high risk.

Voter impersonation is a very inefficient way to tip an election, voter suppression, voter intimidation, and official misconduct are much more effective.


We just had a case of vote buying here in Kentucky during a Republican primary. Those goobers are going to jail.

[Ian David]

6. The accused is a REPUBLICAN. Voter Fraud always seems to be done by REPUBLICANS.

<snip>

She is known as a volunteer who was close to Hialeah City Council member Vivian Casals-Muñoz. She has also worked for the campaigns of state Rep. Eddy González, state Sen. René García, and former state Sen. Rudy García, who ran unsuccessfully for Hialeah mayor last year.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/02/2926694/sister-of-absentee-voter-denies.html#storylink=cpy


Representative Eduardo "Eddy" Gonzalez (Republican)
http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/sections/representatives/details.aspx?MemberId=4385&SessionId=70

state Sen. René García (Republican)
http://www.flsenate.gov/senators/s40

Rudy Garcia (Florida politician) (Republican)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Garcia_%28Florida_politician%29


Not sure about this one:

Vivian Casals-Muñoz (Republican)

Hialeah boletera is arrested — more dominos to fall

<snip>

Or maybe it was Rafael Perez — a former candidate for state rep who is now running for committeeman — who dicen las malas lenguas was hired by Casals-Muñoz for the Hialeah street operations. He denies it and says he has offered to help but that nobody has called him. Perez and his dad Modesto Perez — a mean man who calls you obscenities if you disagree with him — own Mr. Cool refrigeration and have been very politically involved for years (read: campaigned against former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, with whom they have a personal grudge and apparently will make friends with hoodlum Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez in order to hurt). They have also been friends with Cabrera for years. Perez called Ladra the day or two days after she was popped in the street with the ballots in her hot little palm, to tell me that she is not a bad lady and that she was just trying to be helpful. “She just likes Republicans and she always wants to help. She does it for $100 or for a dinner. How sad is it that these little old ladies are involved in the campaign so they can eat?”

Nope. It’s sad that they are exploited by campaign workers so they can eat.

More:
http://www.politicalcortadito.com/2012/08/02/hialeah-boletera-is-arrested-more-dominos-to-fall/

[Judi Lynn]

15. Miami has been known as the nation's armpit regarding corrupt elections for years

It has had a national reputation going back a long time. This article from the Miami Herald cites the mischief since 1997, but it goes back much further than that:

Posted on Saturday, 05.19.12
State left untouched real source of voter fraud

~snip~
The Miami Herald won a Pulitzer Prize deconstructing the 1997 Miami election after Joe Carollo won a majority at the polls but lost to Xavier Suarez with his very suspicious 2-to-1 advantage in absentee votes. That ‘s how it’s really done. How elections are pilfered. With absentee ballots.

The Herald discovered voters whose absentee ballots had been forged, voters who said their absentee ballots were filled out by other people, voters who were paid $10 for their absentee ballots. Herald reporters turned up dead absentee voters and Miami absentee voters who didn’t live in Miami. Some 45 political operatives were arrested, a city commissioner was carted off to jail and Carollo was declared the lawful winner. A Miami-Dade grand jury, in a monument to understatement, declared, “We find that absentee-ballot fraud clearly played an important part in the recent city of Miami elections.”

Not that Miami’s corrupted election had been that much of a shock in South Florida. Just four years before, a Hialeah city election had been similarly tainted by illicit commerce in absentee votes. A 1993 Miami Herald editorial warned, "Florida’s absentee ballot guidelines are among the nation’s most lenient. Indeed, the laws encourage ’ballot brokers’ who exchange blocs of absentee ballots for money. The Legislature needs to adopt tighter regulations for obtaining absentee ballots.” Despite the scandals, Florida has only loosened restrictions in the years since, as if ballot brokers were seen as favored entrepreneurs in Florida, representing a growth industry that should be protected from niggling regulations.

More: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/19/2806558/state-left-untouched-real-source.html#storylink=cpy

[center]~~~~~[/center]
FL: Cloud of absentee ballot fraud haunts South Florida
By Yaël Ossowski / July 25, 2012

~snip~
“They are creating a series of phenomena that are totally anti-American with regard to the handling of absentee voting,” Hector Caraballo, president of Miami-Dade Cuban American Democratic Club, told Florida Watchdog.

“Right now there are a number of politicians and persons related to them who have created a structure that handles absentee voting assistance centers for the elderly in various low-rent institutions,” said the Democratic leader.

Caraballo said the senior age of many voters allows them to be frightened and manipulated into voting for a specific candidate.

“Now the absentee ballot is becoming an important tool,” said Caraballo.

“Some people have 500, 1,000, and 3,000 absentee ballots which are cast for them in a primary election. Especially where the percentage of voting in the county is so infinitely low, those absentee ballots can be manipulated to make any selected politician gain or lose.”

More:
http://watchdog.org/45024/fl-the-cloud-of-absentee-ballot-fraud-haunts-south-florida/

[center]~~~~~[/center]
Florida Is The Most Corrupt State In The Country, According To Integrity Florida Study
Posted: 06/07/2012 2:01 pm Updated: 06/07/2012 5:17 pm

~snip~

According to the "Corruption Risk Report: Florida Ethics Laws," 1,762 of Florida's public officials have been convicted of public corruption since 1976. From 2000 to 2010, there have been an average of 71 convictions each year -- and 107 convictions in 2000 alone, the worst year on record.

Along with recent conviction rates, the study cites a C- grade on ethics enforcement from the State Integrity Investigation and the fact that three Florida cities ranked on Forbes' “Most Miserable Cities” thanks to polticial corruption.

Florida was followed in the rankings by California, Texas, New York and Pennsylvania. The findings come on the heels of a February 2012 study which found Florida to be the fourth most corrupt state in the country, with New York taking the dubious honor at the top. That study used records as far back as 1976, while Integrity Florida used data from 2000 to 2010.

~snip~

Miami-Dade has had more than its share of spectacular political corruption in recent decades. Former Miami City Commissioner Humberto Hernandez pled guilty in 1997 to charges he raked in $8 million in mortgages by over-inflating property values. He was also charged with voter fraud after a comfortable election win.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/florida-most-corrupt-in-country_n_1577571.html

[RebelOne]

16. Yup, I lived in Miami and the Hialeah/Miami Springs area in 50s, 60s and 70s.

You would not believe the corruption in that part of South Florida. I could write a book about it.

[Judi Lynn]

17. What a shame it is that US national politicians crawl to Miami

on their pilgrimages to throw themselves at the feet of these right-wing reactionary dirty clowns (or their off-spring), Batista-connected dirtballs who fled the wrath of the Cuban people after the revolution.

They brought the same filthy sense of entitlement here they cultivated in Mafia-loving, racist, corrupt, brutal pre-revolutionary Cuba.

As their Miami leading political hot-shot, Jorge Mas Canosa once said to the Spanish newspaper, El Pais:

7/31/94 The Miami Herald reprints an interview with Jorge Mas Canosa from the Spanish newspaper El Pais. Mas Canosa was asked by El Pais whether he believed Americans would take over Cuba if Fidel Castro fell. The Herald quoted Mas Canosa as saying, in part, "They haven't even been able to take over Miami! If we have kicked them out of here, how could they possibly take over our own country?" (MH, 7/28/94; WP, 7/28/94)

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_126-150/doc0146b.html

[center]

Jorge Mas, and friend.





The President with Jorge Mas Santos, son of Mas Canosa.[/center]

[Judi Lynn]

18. Private eye who blew open Hialeah ballot case had been there before

Private eye who blew open Hialeah ballot case had been there before
Posted on Saturday, 08.11.12

When private eye Joe Carrillo followed Deisy Cabrera around Hialeah two weeks ago, he never imagined how politically explosive his findings would turn out to be.

By Charles Rabin
[e-mail]

The private investigator who broke open the Hialeah absentee-ballot case that has vexed Miami-Dade’s two highest-profile elections is so paranoid, he won’t part with his keys because someone might break into his car and steal his computer.

“My computers have been hacked. You know they want to get into my car. They might be listening to my phone calls and they have my GPS,” said an animated Jose “Joe” Carrillo. “Ever since that day, my life has been hell.”

~snip~

What is known is that since Carrillo informed Miami-Dade Police in mid-July about the actions of a Hialeah woman he was hired to follow, the county’s mayor and state attorney have been fending off questions about improper absentee-ballot collections, political operatives have been fired, and a 56-year-old woman known as a boletera has been charged with ballot fraud.

In short, what had been a relatively calm election cycle with somewhat intriguing mayoral and state attorney races has spun into a telenovela filled with intrigue playing out in Hialeah, a city that has long been recognized as the Rubik’s Cube of politics. The election for mayor, state attorney, and several other local and state posts is Tuesday.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/11/2947539/private-eye-who-blew-open-hialeah.html#storylink=cpy