Category Archives: Miami

Looks like I wasn't the only person to notice the weirdly high rate of undervotes in the special election. But could you imagine a more belittling treatment than this story in the Herald today?

Pesky 'undervotes' raise small concerns

More than 1,000 Miami-Dade residents failed to cast a vote, or had a vote that did not count, in Tuesday's strong-mayor referendum — a tiny percentage of the overall tally but still worrisome to some voter advocates watching the single-question ballot.

Though the difference wasn't anywhere near enough to swing the election — unlike November's disputed Sarasota election to replace Rep. Katherine Harris — the “undervotes” are still a concern, with election-reform advocates leery of touch-screen machines that do not leave paper trails.

“People don't go there and forget what they went for and walk out. I don't buy that,” said Sandy Wayland, president of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition.

Still, what makes these undervotes different and less sensational than others is that Miami-Dade absentee voters on optical-scan paper ballots cast nearly as high a percentage of undervotes.

The point about paper ballots is a good one, as it is genuinely hard to explain, but even so, there's good reason to worry that something funny is going on with our voting machines, as can be seen from this passage in one the Herald's own blogs:

an independent study that cites new evidence of machine failure in Sarasota County and concludes that misleading ballot design, voter turnoff and other theories do not account for the “extraordinarily high undervote rate” in the county.

The authors of the report, who said they performed a statistical analysis of electronic ballot and “event log data” from the November election, said they were “unable to propose a convincing mechanism based on voter, machine or ballot characteristics that completely explains the phenomenon.

“In a nutshell,” wrote authors David Dill and Walter Mebane, “the excessive CD-13 undervote rate in Sarasota County is not yet well-understood and will not be understood without further investigation.”

Once again, if you get all your news in print, you're missing out.

Here's a table, filched from the county elections office:

CHARTER AMENDMENT

744 of 744 Precincts Completely Reporting
		Percent	Votes
YES		56.48%	84,351
NO		43.52%	64,984
Total			149,335

Wait a minute….

Ballots Cast: 150,399. Votes total 149,335.

More than a thousand people turned up to vote for this (or submitted absentee ballots) and voted blank? What's up with that? Isn't that a remarkably high rate of spoiled e-ballots for an election with exactly ONE question on it?

Early voting and absentees broke about 2:1 in favor of the “strong mayor” but the actual number of votes cast was minuscule. Out of 1,050,581 eligible voters, only 42,171 voted in favor, and 23,197 against, for a spread of under twenty thousand. Today's voters should be a little more numerous, but with 281 of 744 precincts counted, we're only up to a total of 95,987 votes cast, and the election-day vote is split almost 50/50, with a slight edge to the “no” side.

If this trend were to speed up just a bit, it might become another nail-biter; at present rates, though, the “no” vote isn't catching up quite fast enough. Since the votes are not evenly distributed geographically, and I have no real sense of who has reported and who hasn't, I don't think the trend means much, so anything could still happen ….

Update: With 5/7 of the precincts reporting, the yes vote is now slightly ahead even with today's voters. The spread remains small — about 22,000 votes — but that's out of only 126,000 or so cast. Voter turnout is well into double-digit percentages, though, so that's something.

It's election day today on the Charter Reform, and I'm going to vote FOR it. If you're a Miami-Dade County resident and registered to vote, I urge you to do the same. Turnout will be very light so your vote counts more than usual.

Meanwhile, it's business as usual.

Fraudulent mailings is an old Miami tradition, and it looks as if the lurid mailings I blogged about the other day could be in keeping with tradition.

At least, that's the story at Eye On Miami, FRAUD ALERT in Miami! Political Action Committees and mass mailing by geniusofdespair. It seems that the “Citizens for Unity and Common Rights PAC” is remarkably hard to find. And that its main protagonist, supposedly one Bernardo Bestard, is also sort of hard to find — and has a remarkably protean signature.

The Daily Business Review has a story today about a real screw-up by the US Attorney's office here in the Southern District of Florida. The article doesn't seem to be online, but you can read a quick summary at David Markus's blog:

Judge Moore had refused to grant a continuance in the past. This time, he granted the government's request for a continuance, but he was not happy about it. Apparently the government threatened to dismiss the entire indictment if the continuance wasn't granted. Both sides have reason to be upset — the defense prepared for trial, made reservations for hotels in the Keys, flew in witnesses and so on because this was a firm trial date. The prosecution is rightfully upset because the lead prosecutor has been ill and in the hospital, which is, of course, good cause to continue the case.

Here's what I want to know: neither the DBR nor Mr. Markus connect this fiasco to the current, rather inexperienced, management at the Southern District. Yet, one of the many things that went wrong, and which the full article makes clear angered the judge, is that the number two lawyer on the case left the US Attorney's office some time ago, but apparently no one told the other side or the court. And when the lead lawyer got ill, there was no backstop in place, the government was at the last minute unprepared for trial, and it had no choice but to say it would dismiss if a continuance wasn't granted.

Why isn't this sort of management failure exactly the sort of thing that should be the responsibility of Mr. R. Alexander Acosta, who despite relative youth and rather thin credentials was parachuted into the job over the heads of the deputy US attorney, who had about 20 years of experience, and was recommended by the previous incumbent?

I'm not and never have been a prosecutor, so the question is more than rhetorical. Anyone know?

We're having an election this Tuesday here in Miami-Dade County. Indeed voting started several days ago. But you'd hardly know it from the coverage, which until the last couple of days has been almost non-existent, and still remains quite light.

Voter turnout is expected to be minimal. Yet the issue — who should hold the whip hand over the top officials in the county bureaucracy and thus have effective control of major decisions in s spending and public policy — is an important and difficult one. We currently enjoy (if that's the term) a 'weak mayor' form of county government that gives the County Commission great power to hire and especially fire major county bureaucrats, including the county manager, and the people who run the airport, the schools, the housing department and so on. It's fair to say that the performance of many of these departments is poor on good days and frequently appalling. And in my opinion perhaps the biggest reason for the unacceptable level of incompetence, cronyism, and corruption is the influence of patronage and influence networks (or, if you prefer, patronage and graft networks) in which the members of the county commission figure prominently as ringleaders or beneficiaries. Not all of this is illegal; some of it involves legal graft, called campaign contributions. Some of it is even the dysfunctional result of sincere attempts to achieve various policy outcomes, something which around here seems to produce disorganization when originating from a multi-member body.

Given the mess, three's an enormous temptation to say change, any change, surely must be to the good. Unfortunately, there are also some reasons to fret about what a 'strong major' would be emboldened to do. While the incumbent mayor strikes me as more honest and competent than the dominant faction on the Commission, this is far far from inevitable. And the long-run political implications are not ideal either — the county Mayor becomes a significant political force in the state, which given who they have been is not all that attractive a prospect.

As you might expect, the public debate, to the extent we are having one, has little to do with the real issues. There's a danger of the Mayor doing a lot of bad things; it's hard to imagine him stealing more than the current crowd, if only because there's only one of him and many of them.

As I mentioned, the campaign has been surprisingly invisible. So far, I've gotten exactly two pieces of direct mail in this election. Both came yesterday, and both are from the anti-amendment faction, the people who want to keep the status quo in place, one characterized by cronyism, corruption and inaction by the Commission. Not that you'd guess it from this classic piece of Rovian-class projection. I'm posting small images below; each is a link to a larger .pdf image.

First mailer:

Front:

Back:

Second mailer:

Front:

Back:

As I said, the mailers are something between hilarious and dishonest, since at present it's the Commission that is more implicated in the corruption infesting the county bureaucracy.

To see what some other local bloggers are saying (they're pretty much all for the charter amendment), see:

• Eye on Miami, For Strong Mayor by gimleteye
• 26th Parallel, Strong Mayor
• Coral Gables View, A Strong Mayor-County Manager Government for Miami-Dade
• Gay South Florida, Alvarez's stance angers Christian coalition
• CityDebate.com, Strong Mayor Needed To Clip The Wings Of An Arrogant And Out Of Control Miami-Dade County Commission

Some of those authors express reservations, ones which I tend to share, but even so on balance I think I'm for it. The Commission has failed to meet too many local challenges. (Over?) centralizing responsibility will at least make it easier to know exactly who to blame.