Florida "Phantom Ballots" Point to Congressional Campaign

[Image courtesy of miamiherald]

Back in February, I wrote about an investigation into an attempt to use Miami-Dade’s online absentee ballot request system to obtain ballots for thousands of real but infrequent voters in the August 2012 primary.

I noted at the time that a Miami Herald reporter tracking the case had discovered that one key lead was never followed:

Included in the list of masked IP [Internet Protocol] addresses were three domestic addresses that – for whatever reason – were never investigated. Prosecutors are following up now to see if that information can help shed light on who was behind the requests.

Once that lead was followed, it led to search warrants targeting a campaign aide to a freshman member of Congress. The Miami Herald – who has been on this case from the beginning – has the details:

Congressman Joe Garcia’s chief of staff abruptly resigned Friday after being implicated in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests.

Friday afternoon, Garcia said he had asked Jeffrey Garcia, no relation, for his resignation after the chief of staff — also the congressman’s top political strategist — took responsibility for the plot. Hours earlier, law enforcement investigators raided the homes of another of Joe Garcia’s employees and a former campaign aide in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter …

The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office, seeking electronic equipment such as computers, served search warrants Friday at the homes of Giancarlo Sopo, 30, Joe Garcia’s communications director; and John Estes, 26, his 2012 campaign manager.

The warrants came after authorities were able to trace the domestic IP addresses to physical locations in Miami. The link to the campaign staff suggests that this episode was an attempt to influence specific races. A recent Herald editorial tries to connect the dots:

The stakes are high and may cover many more races than Mr. Garcia’s. In fact, of the 2,552 fraudulent online requests, about 500 involved the District 26 Democratic primary where Mr. Garcia was competing against three other candidates, including one, Justin Lamar Sternad who is involved in a separate federal corruption case involving former Rep. Rivera.

Mr. Sternad pleaded guilty to accepting $81,486 in illegal payments from unnamed co-conspirators. Investigators are looking into whether Mr. Rivera put up the stealth candidate in the Democratic primary to take votes from Mr. Garcia. Mr. Rivera and a Republican operative who was working for Mr. Sternad’s campaign, Ana Sol Alliegro, deny wrongdoing.

Meantime, there’s another suspected ringer candidate — Jose Rolando “Roly” Arrojo — with ties to Jeffrey Garcia who Republicans suspect ran in 2010 as a conservative to take votes from Mr. Rivera.

Voters’ heads must spin at all the webs of deceit in this race. But there are other races, too, that involved the phantom ballot requests — mostly for Republican candidates in legislative races.

The investigation into those requests continues.

Everyone involved in the case – and especially Rep. Garcia – have noted that the fraudulent ballot requests went nowhere because the County flagged them at the time as suspicious. But the fact that campaign staff were able to identify the online absentee request system as a potential vulnerability and attempt (albeit unsuccessfully) to manipulate it should be a warning to election offices everywhere about the need for information security.

Indeed, but for the alleged perpetrators’ failure to hide their tracks – which were only followed when a local paper suggested that authorities do so – this case would have remained a troubling mystery. The next “bad guy” might not be so careless.

Stay tuned.