It’s at times like this that I miss my blogging amigo BoRev. He’d know just what to do with stories like this:
An electoral scandal of great proportions involving the office of State Attorney General Katherine Fernández-Rundle is rocking the city of Miami after a woman was arrested for falsifying absentee ballots.
The office of Fernández-Rundle announced that the denunciations of fraud are under investigation and that a grand jury could be convened with the goal of approving legislation to avoid more such scandals.
The case of Deisy Pentón de Cabrera, a woman who was arrested a few days ago for forging absentee ballots, unleashed a wave of denunciations that involve the attorney general herself.
Media reports emphasize that Fernández-Rundle recused herself from the case against Pentón, since one of her political councillors is involved in the scandal, which originated in the city of Hialeah, in Miami-Dade County.
The use of absentee ballots in the electoral processes in Miami has come under harsh criticism, since the system, created to be used by voters who on election day are on vacation, sick or incapacitated, has become an efficient mechanism for electoral fraud.
At the end of the 1990s, changes to the state Electoral Law opened the way for indiscriminate use of absentee identification cards, and in 2004 all limitations to their use were eliminated.
In 2004, just 12 percent of the voters who participated in the presidential elections in Miami used these ballots, while in the voting for county mayor in 2011, they constituted more than 40 percent of the votes.
Raúl Martínez, former mayor of Hialeah, accused the state attorney general and the politicians of Miami-Dade of making a big business out of the fraudulent use of the absentee ballots.
Attorney-General Fernández-Rundle, with almost two decades’ experience in the state attorney general’s office in Miami-Dade County, is also known for her close ties to ultra-right-wing groups of Cuban origin in Miami.
In 1997 a great electoral-fraud scandal in that Florida city resulted in the annulment of the election of mayor Xavier Suárez, and the arrest and imprisonment of then-commissioner Humberto Hernández.
56 persons went on trial following an investigation which uncovered more than 300 fraudulent votes by absentee ballots, including one by a dead man.
Translation mine. Linkage added.
I can just hear BoRev asking the musical question: Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if that happened in Venezuela? Only it can’t, because the Venezuelan electoral process is clean as a whistle, and approved by no less than Jimmy Carter himself.
Of course, the crapaganda whore media up in Gringolandia is playing it as some kind of draconian scheme because fingerprint scanners are involved. This while voter disenfranchisement of blacks and non-Cuban, non-right-wing Latin@s is a going concern all over the US, and especially in crazy-ass Florida.
I don’t know about you, but I smell an almighty cover-up. And an electoral fraud scandal to rival Bush 2000 a-brewin’. Too bad for FUX Snooze and the right-wing scarebloggers that it’s not happening in Venezuela, but in their own backyard. And that the culprit is not Chavecito, but their own Repug candidates and office-holders.
I’d ask why no one is screaming about that, but I already know the answer.
This is kind of normal for elections down here in the Miami area where corruption is King.We had a fury about this last week and little since then.
This is for elections on this coming Tuesday for low level judgeships, county hacks and some state-wide primaries but it is often has a low turnout, so these absentee ballots are worth their weight in gold.