csua.org/u/5ei -> www.pulitzer.org/year/1999/investigative-reporting/works/980201_the_outsiders.html
They pile into a van and head to the Kinloch Park Middle School to vote every election day. The important things we do as a family together, adds his niece, Olga Hernandez Marco. Well, if its against the law, well have to change next time, Onelio Hernandez said. Willie Darby, 53, who moved to an apartment on Palm Avenue in Hialeah six months ago. He still cast a ballot from his old address in Miamis commission District 3. He changed his registration to Hialeah after being interviewed by The Herald. Ive always felt more in tune with things in Miami than anywhere else, Darby said. He bristled when asked if he thought he could be breaking the law. Look, Im an American citizen and I feel you dont violate the law when you vote, he said. A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE Voting by non-residents also violates state law Voting where you live is a bedrock principle of elections, a guarantee that a citys leaders are chosen by the people who are affected most - those who have to pay the taxes and live with the services. State elections law also enshrines that fundamental rule, saying that voters must be registered at their legal residence, and must live within the borders of a town to vote there. Its a third-degree felony for an ineligible voter to willfully cast a ballot. The Herald already has reported widespread irregularities among the 4,740 absentee ballots cast in Miamis Nov.
Thats at the edge of the Everglades - 13 miles from their old precinct. On Election Day, the Roques drive for a half-hour into the city to vote at their old precinct, Iglesia Bautista Resurreccion at Southwest 27th Avenue and 23rd Street. The Roques say they thought they were still eligible to vote in Miami elections because Miami is the address on their mail. But Lillian Roque also said: When we moved, I couldnt vote for the people I liked here. Whatever their reasons, illegal voters have one thing in common: No one has to worry much about being caught. Leahy says his office - overwhelmed by the volume of Dade voters, hamstrung by laws meant to encourage voting - is all but helpless to enforce residency rules. SAFEGUARDS LACKING The law is on the side of nonresident voters When people register or change their address, elections workers simply take them at their word. There are more legal safeguards against a teenager buying a six-pack of beer at a convenience store. Currently as the law stands, there isnt much that we can do about it, Leahy says. We dont know how big the problem is, but the potential problem is very real. Leahy says the department sometimes stumbles across non-resident voters, if mail comes back as undeliverable or if the elections staff finds a change of mailing address. For instance, the elections department found out last February that Santa Cruz, the Miami Beach widow, had apparently changed her mailing address. But Santa Cruz was allowed to vote anyway when she showed up at the polls last November. Leahy says the new motor-voter law meant to encourage voter registration does not allow him to remove such inactive voters. And he says a mailing will catch only people who need a reminder to change their voting registration. Its meant to catch those who just dont understand the process, Leahy said. Home for some voters is outside the county For real Miami residents - who pay some of the highest property taxes in South Florida - this means their decisions are being diluted by a steady stream of out-of-town votes. You have people coming into Miami and affecting the democratic process when they dont know whats going on, said Kenneth Merker, a Northeast Miami community activist and former mayoral candidate.
Another fan of Miami politics: David Mariano Cruz, son of postman Mariano Cruz, who lost in his bid last November to unseat Miami Commissioner Willy Gort. Cruz, a Miami-Dade bus driver, says he has lived in a North Miami condominium for eight years - while keeping his address at his parents home on Northwest 26th Street in Allapattah. He says its convenient because the polling place is near the bus headquarters where he works. I live in North Miami, but 99 percent of the time Im there at my parents house, he said. CONVENIENCE A FACTOR For some outsiders, its easier to vote in Miami Rene and Georgina Espinosa kept their Little Havana registration even after they moved to a Flagler Street trailer park in West Dade, just east of Sweetwater. Carollo fans, they said they wanted to make sure they could be counted in his corner. For some of the non-Miami members of the Miami electorate, the big lure of voting in Miami wasnt politics. It was convenience: Eduardo Diaz, 64, moved out of Miami to a trailer park in Homestead more than a year ago. But he kept his old voting address at Southwest Eighth Street and 32nd Avenue because the polling place is a lot closer to his job. I work at the airport, so thats why I vote there, said Diaz, who said he was a Carollo supporter.
I thought I was a Miami resident, one voter said Some pleaded ignorance. I thought I was a Miami resident, said Maria Emma Castro de Garzon of unincorporated West Dade, who says she voted for Suarez. Gary voted in District 3, where he lived for 27 years, even though he now lives in a condo in District 2. It was just an oversight on my part, said Gary, an investment banker and potential government witness in the unrelated Operation Greenpalm corruption probe. I failed to change from one city district to another after I moved. Andre Whittle, basketball coach at the Academy for Community Education alternative school, has lived in Carol City, part of unincorporated Northwest Dade, for five years. I live in Carol City, but I never knew that you have to vote in the city where you live, Whittle said. Moreno, the FIU political scientist, believes many voters are in fact innocently confused about the countys two-tier system of government. For instance, every Miami-Dade voter can vote for the office of county executive mayor, while only people who live within a citys borders can vote in city elections. Some of the irregularities are just people who are ignorant and are uninformed of just what theyre supposed to be voting on. TELLTALE SIGNATURES Voters sign at the polls, next to official address Yet Leahy, the elections supervisor, points out a contradiction in the stories of blissful ignorance: When voters show up at the polls, the precinct worker asks them if they still live at the address on their voter registration. They sign the voter book right next to that address - though Leahy says that doesnt count as a legal oath. Still others offer no reason at all: Locksmith Peter Pick, with his wife Eldy, voted out of an apartment building they own in Little Havana. The Picks are longtime activists who work to protect the neighborhood where they really live: Snapper Creek in Kendall. Corporate records list Peter Pick as president of the Snapper Creek Park Lake Association, a homeowners group. Eldy Pick played a leadership role in a 1991 neighborhood effort to chase away an adult video store. They would not speak to a reporter who visited their Kendall Drive home and asked for an explanation of the residency issue. Records show that a ballot was cast in the name of Marjorie Share, who now lives in Surfside - not the address where her vote came from, an apartment house in Miamis commission District 3. She phoned a reporter after a letter was left at her Surfside apartment. She and her husband offered differing explanations of why she could not have voted on Nov.
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