Miami Courant

There has been a history of voter fraud issues in Miami, including the mayoral race of 1997, wherein the state courts ended up throwing out absentee ballots and declaring the previous mayor the winner.

In March 1998, Joe Carollo was reinstated as mayor after the Third District Court of Appeal threw out absentee ballots and declared him the winner. 

A three-judge panel ruled that the Nov. 4, 1997, election had multiple instances of absentee fraud. The panel ruled that absentee voting is a privilege and does not hold the same rights as those voting in person.

With the absentee ballots, Xavier Suarez had been declared the winner of the election initially. 

After evidence was introduced in court of forged ballots, improperly witnessed ballots and those who didn’t live in the city casting ballots there, a Miami-Dade judge had originally ruled for a new election to occur, but once the case went to appellate court, the appellate judges ruled for all absentee ballots to be tossed — using only votes cast on voting machines to declare the winner.

“Voting at the machine is the exercise of a constitutional right that has to be protected,” Kendall Coffey, Carollo’s attorney said to The Miami Herald. “Voting absentee is a privilege.”

Suarez’s attorneys argued for a new election, but Judge Rudy Sorondo, as well as the other judges on the panel, ruled that would be rewarding those who had committed voter fraud.

“What message do we send if we say to those third parties, ‘You can cheat, you can defraud and the worst that happens is that you get another crack at bat’?” Sorondo said, the news media reported.

While there was no evidence that Suarez himself or his family was involved in voter fraud, Sorondo believed that Suarez’s campaign should have had more control over “dogs of war.”