Vote-Fraud Scandal Casts a Shadow on Mayoral Election

Dead men voting. Absentee ballots bought with cash. A burglary at campaign headquarters. Campaign workers arrested.

It’s election time, and residents of southern Florida’s largest city are being asked to ignore a growing vote-fraud scandal and go to the polls again today to break a virtual dead heat between two mayoral candidates who have been slugging it out in a campaign certified as bizarre even by Miami standards.

Late Wednesday, Dade State Atty. Kathy Fernandez Rundle announced that she would convene a grand jury investigation into allegations that fraudulent absentee ballots may have tainted last week’s election that led to the runoff between Mayor Joe Corollo and challenger Xavier Suarez, a former mayor.

Meanwhile, in Miami Beach, where another runoff is scheduled today, a circuit court judge Wednesday ordered that absentee ballots already returned be sealed, saying they also may be tainted.

“I hope voters are concerned. There are serious allegations that fraud is being committed,” said David Leahy, Dade County’s supervisor of elections. In Miami, Corollo was forced into a runoff when his vote total fell just 0.4% shy of the 50% he needed for an outright victory over Suarez, mayor here for eight years, and three other candidates. With 35% of Miami’s registered voters casting ballots, Corollo received 21,854 votes; Suarez got 20,602.

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Since that election, state officials have seized more than 5,000 absentee ballots--which favored Suarez by 2 to 1--in a sweeping investigation of fraud that includes allegations that voters were paid for their ballots, that votes were cast by people who live outside the city and that some who supposedly voted have been dead for years.

Manuel Yip, a Cuban immigrant who ran a Miami restaurant before dying four years ago at 75, was found not only to have voted absentee for Suarez, but to have cast post-mortem ballots in at least two other elections.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on Wednesday raided the Miami home of a 92-year-old political operative named Alberto Russi and seized about 100 absentee ballots intended for today’s election, along with stacks of voter registration cards and absentee ballot applications.

Russi’s signature appears on Yip’s ballot in a space marked “witness,” FDLE agents said. He said his name was forged. He was charged with three counts of election fraud.

Last Friday, a man wearing a “Suarez for Mayor” T-shirt was arrested after he allegedly offered to buy three absentee ballots bearing the names of dead voters. Miguel Amador, 44, was charged with vote fraud.

Suarez has denied that any of his campaign workers violated the law, and he suggested Amador was entrapped by police. Lawyers for Corollo, meanwhile, have filed suit asking that the absentee ballots cast Nov. 4 be tossed out and that Corollo be declared the winner.

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The allegations of fraud have all but overwhelmed the issues in the mayoral race, in which two Cuban-born rivals have waged an acrimonious campaign punctuated by personal attacks in both English and Spanish. Corollo--42, a onetime city commissioner who made a political comeback with his election 15 months ago after the death of then-Mayor Steve Clark--claims credit for reducing crime and dealing with an $68-million budget shortfall uncovered during a federal corruption probe.

Suarez, 48, a Harvard-trained lawyer, charges Corollo with exaggerating the budget crisis for political gain. He said he could save millions of dollars by reducing staff and selling off city property.

In efforts to win the favor of older immigrant voters, both men have gone on Spanish-language radio to tout their cubania, their Cubanness.

“It’s too bad this is happening here, but it can happen anywhere,” said Leahy of Dade County’s election sideshow. “The potential for fraud is not unique to South Florida.

“For the first time, there is actual evidence that some of these allegations are true. I’m just glad it’s out in the open so we can deal with it.”

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Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.