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Absentee ballots and campaign shakedowns in Miami

By: Soren Dayton (Diary)  |  November 28th, 2011 at 05:25 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

So, I confess, I had to look up who Luther Campbell was, aside from a guy who came in fourth in a race for county mayor in Miami-Dade County. He was a somewhat high-profile music promoter, fronting for groups like 2 Live Crew. But it is his electoral experience, as described in his column in the Miami New Times, that draws our attention today. He describes some of the more ugly experiences that someone like him has when trying to put together a campaign in Miami and the strange offers he gets:

The only way to get that many absentee ballots is by hiring brokers who charge candidates thousands of dollars to deliver bundles to the county elections department. The brokers are the ones responsible for dead people voting in the ’80s and ’90s. Now they go around strong-arming the elderly residents at assisted living facilities or fooling them with free breakfast at the local IHOP. The brokers also pay off preachers so they can set up shop inside houses of worship to sign up absentee voters.

I saw it firsthand when I ran in the recent county mayoral race. One guy, who I won’t name, guaranteed he could deliver thousands of absentee ballots in North Miami and North Miami Beach for $3,000. I took a pass. It showed on Election Day. I had more early and Election Day ballots than absentee votes.

Sure would be neat if he said more about this. We know that this problem isn’t necessarily unique to south Florida, as there were a bunch of arrests in more rural north Florida earlier this month. One wonders if these are the sorts of “manufacturing ballots” stories that former Rep. Artur Davis was talking about in neighboring Alabama.

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COMMENTS

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  • lucasblack

    He’s an interesting guy and was, in fact, one of the worst victims of persecution of free speech in the 1980′s. Some ass named Nick Navarro who was sheriff of Broward County from 1985-1992 didn’t like the fact that he used a lot of naughty words in his songs so he actually had him arrested and wasted lots of money trying to get him convicted for obscenity. Embarrassingly, Navarro was a Republican but he was defeated in the GOP primary in ’92, I am happy to say.
    Glad to see that Luther is still speaking up. Makes me want to go and listen to ‘Me So Horny’. Good for him!

    • Tbone

      Thanks.

  • YnotNOW

    I suspect these allegations are significantly overblown. For example, I have set up a voter registration table at my Church, to encourage civic participation among the congregation, and to register voters on the spot. In Colorado, not only can this be done on-line, but you can register for an absentee ballot at the same time. See link:
    https://www.sos.state.co.us/Voter/secuRegVoterIntro.do

    There may well be absentee ballot fraud, and someone ?asking? for $3000 to register voters definitely sounds illegal. But absentee ballot registration at a Church is likely not the culprit.

  • NeoKong

    Again and again we always discover these massive voter fraud schemes involving voter registration drives and absentee ballots or early voting.
    I just find it absurd that states will allow thousand and thousand of votes to be cast by people who are not present.
    You would have to be a sucker to think that is all legit.

    If someone went into a nursing home and left with money or jewelery the way they leave with votes they would go to jail.

    The thing that is even more outrageous is that the real cases where an absentee ballot is necessary as in someone in the military the odds are high that many of those votes will not be counted.

  • Michael M. Keohane

    on entering nursing homes or assisted living facilities, who have been voting Republican all their lives, suddenly start voting Democratic. However, the reverse is seldom true. People, who have voted Democratic, continue to vote Democratic and, in Chicago, continue to do so after death. There have been investigations in New York state where it was found that the nursing attendants were “assisting” the elderly to vote “correctly.”

  • hitthedeck

    ACRON didn’t go away, they just changed their names. These nuts will do the same thing next November and it will be more than the last election. They don’t care if its illegal and they will be trying to make their quota to get a good commission from the wealth spreader. The dead will vote again and the living will vote more than once in the same election. The black panthers will be intimidating and the Justice department will turn a blind eye. The American public will have to use swift action to prevent this open corruption through out the states. The inter cities will have most of the violations and will be hard to police. Beware of the T-Shirts that have a Union Logo.

  • http://www.ajharaldson.com lakeworthcane

    I’ve lived in and around Miami for a while, and I can tell you, it’s probably the most corrupt city in the country. Campbell’s allegations kind of reveal why.

    The corruption isn’t limited to elected politicians or even the public sector. It’s in the entire population. It seems like everybody in Miami is working an angle or a scam of some nature. Everybody is getting away with something, getting something they’re not supposed to have and/or doing something they’re not supposed to be doing. Driver’s licences, voter registration, insurance, public-sector entitlement payments, housing, drugs, gambling, Ponzi schemes, getting over and/or around all kinds of private- and public sector regulations, all variety of workplace shenanigans: all rules, written and unwritten, are fair game to be broken.

    It might make some people very angry to read this, but I think the reason why is in the demographics. The vast majority of people in and around Miami/Dade County come from countries rife with oppression and control of one kind or another; countries where corruption was accepted as “the way,” and where people learn at an early age that working the system, cronyism and favoritism are dominating facts of life.

    They came here for a better life but brought their old lives with them.

    My gal and I are moving across the state. It is, for all practical purposes, like moving to another country.

    I’ve fond memories of Miami before the early 80s (the boat lift and McDuffie riots in Summer 1980, to be specific) when it was still a small, somewhat exotic, very beautiful resort town: such a lovely place.

    It’s nothing like that now; it’s hopelessly corrupt (and I thought carefully before using the adverb “hopelessly”), grotesquely overcrowded, bankrupt (in more ways than one); once beautiful neighborhoods are slums, and noplace is safe.

    So, Campbell’s allegations probably have a large measure of truth to them. Miami is the sleaze capitol, and the reason it’s the sleaze capitol is because its inhabitants like it that way, and want it that way.

    • wumingren

      I know a few good people who live in Florida, but I have to wonder if the place isn’t a magnet for the criminal element. I live in Minnesota, but almost all of my junk mail — both snail mail and email — comes from Florida. These are usually the “You have won a cruise” type of scams that require you to send a processing fee in order to obtain your tickets. And then there are the phone calls with Florida area codes, usually from people trying to get your credit card information with the old “reduce your interest rates” ruse, but also from the bogus magazine subscription renewal people who offer a big savings if you renew through them instead of through the actual publisher. How they get your name, address, telephone number, and titles of the magazines to which you subscribe and when the subscriptions expire is beyond me, but I do know that they charge way more than the publishers do. Don’t fall for that trick. In fact, if you get anything that originates from Florida, treat it as though it came from Nigeria. I simply don’t trust Florida, and I have no intentions of ever visiting the place.

      • auntvick

        You are missing out on some of the most beautiful beaches, the very best weather, the nicest people, if you stick to what you have said. These facts are also some of the reasons you get all that junk mail and tele-scaming. Everybody loves the Florida lifestyle, even the crooks. Please don’t lump us all in to your off color basket. There are many, many patriots here in Florida from all over this country. And many homegrown ones also. We have many immigrants who get caught up in these tele-scams without knowing they are getting rooked too. Don’t be so narrow minded. I’m offended to be lumped in with these ne’er-do-wells. After all I haven’t labelled you in with all those “liberal nuts” in Minnesota.

  • johnt

    tighten the regs. Going into old age homes screams out fraud. As long as it benefits one party more then another nothing will happen, Our media watchdogs have the morals of alley cats and protest as their own corruption allows them.

    • uselogic

      Gov. Rick Scott & current, Republican majority legislature tightened up both the early voting and absentee ballot regs. No more “found in a car trunk 30 days later” absentee ballots. We now prosecute you if you deliver them after 48 hours. No more at-the-poll address changes. Oh and if you don;t have an ID, your vote is provisional. How ’bout them apples?

      You ought to hear the liberal activists, newspapers and the now Dem front group League of Women Voters squawk “vote suppression”. It’s a lovely thing!

      • johnt

        Perhaps reason and ethics will catch on.
        The old “found in a warehouse” was always good for a Dem victory.