City gave to accused ‘boletera’ ballot broker

[flamingdem]

Source: Miami Herald

Emelina Llanes seems to be a lucky woman – and one with friends in high places.

This Hialeah activist, denounced as a boletera, or ballot broker, by two former police officers, lives in a townhouse that’s been repaired with some $58,000 worth of city funds. She drives a Nissan Xterra that once belonged to the city mayor.

And, though she doesn’t quite remember, Llanes is such a valued campaign worker that even Florida Gov. Rick Scott paid her thousands of dollars to mobilize voters on his behalf.

In recent interviews with El Nuevo Herald, Llanes said she’s tired of her critics, like former mayor Raul Martinez, who insist on calling her a boletera. According to Llanes, a charming 74-year-old widow, she’s never received special perks for her political involvement and assures she is not a boletera.

“What I do is help people,” she said. “Nobody has ever given me a thing.”

In the case of her townhouse, public records show that in 1996 and 2007, she benefited from municipal grants aimed at helping low-income residents do home improvements and keep their properties up to code. Currently, her townhouse is valued at $96,000, according to the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser.

When she received these grants, Llanes said was a loyal campaign volunteer for then-mayors Martinez and Julio Robaina. She denied that her political activism helped her get the grants.

Llanes throwing a bottle at videographer:


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/22/v-print/3016048/city-gave-to-accused-boletera.html#storylink=cpy

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/22/3016048/city-gave-to-accused-boletera.html#disqus_thread

---

This is of interest because she worked for Rick Scott and received $5,000. It looks like absentee ballots turn elections in Florida and there are many that were turned right at the end due to the counting of absentee ballots.

---- related excerpt:

Llanes also said she learned much of what she knows about politics by working on Martinez’ campaigns. On Wednesday, Martínez recognized that Llanes had organized a party on his behalf once in the mid-90s. However, he said she was never a campaign worker.

“She’s a shameless liar,” he said.

In recent years, Llanes has become a popular campaign employee at the city, county and even state level. In 2010, Scott paid her $5,000 to work on his gubernatorial campaign, according to financial records.

On Wednesday, Llanes refused to explain what her role was in that campaign.

“Anybody can give me 5,000 bucks”, she said. “Nobody should care who gives that to me.”

Then she denied ever receiving the payment.

“I don’t know anything about those 5,000 bucks,” she said. “That’s so much money.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/22/v-print/3016048/city-gave-to-accused-boletera.html#storylink=cpy

[iemitsu]

1. something fishy about this story.

especially since it is happening in florida where so much effort has been made to "clean up" voting rolls.
a state that has made it nearly impossible to register new voters is being paid by politicians to "deliver' absentee ballots to officials to be counted?

[flamingdem]

2. Somehow the whole corrupt system of vote selling has also been kept out of MSM news

Gov. Rick Scott refuses to crack down on it, wonder why! Once someone talks the whole scheme might be uncovered -- but there are just as many covering up in high places.

Let's hope they will at least be less brazen for this election..

[jonesgirl]

3. It goes deeper than that, believe me! I've lived in Florida for a short time, and I shake my head at

the things that go on here within.

[iemitsu]

4. something rotten in the state of florida.

[flamingdem]

5. Can you shed some light on the vote brokering?

Is that not the worst problem, if not what do you think is the worst?

Sounds like November is going to be rough there.

[jonesgirl]

6. Honestly, it's hush hush on the subject right now. Some people seem to be afraid to register or

vote because they have been told they will be monitored by the party they didn't vote for, then singled out. How true is this? I don't know because its so hard to find.

[flamingdem]

7. Good grief, that's quite a rumor

because they would have no way to know who they voted for -? Is this Miami Dade? In that case I'm guessing it's absentee ballots?

[jonesgirl]

8. Central Florida

[flamingdem]

9. Please check your inbox

wanted to send you some info

[jonesgirl]

11. Check

[iemitsu]

12. ballot brokering is a service "business model" that can be found in immigrant

communities where individuals are unsure about the language and voting procedures of their new land. the broker volunteers to help the "victim" (if that is what the mark is? usually elderly people) register to vote and apply for an absentee ballot. when the ballot arrives the broker will help fill out the ballot and get it into the mail. some old people "helped" by these brokers claim they don't actually know how the ballot was filled out and don't know who their vote was cast for.
the broker is not paid by the voter to help but may get kickbacks from politicians for delivering the votes. there is evidence that they do get paid but they deny it.
while it is most prevalent in hispanic communities in the US here is an article from miami which discusses the use of brokers in the haitian community there.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/23/3014423/ballot-brokers-also-target-haitian.html

** looks like post #10 beat me to it.

[flamingdem]

14. Thanks for posting this

It's amazing that this goes on and it sounds difficult to control. As the woman in the OP says - I'm just helping them to fill out their ballot..

[iemitsu]

16. my moter-in-law lives with my wife and me.

she speaks pigeon english and struggles to sound out words on a written page. she has been in the US since 1957 and a citizen since 1959 and since then has voted in every election. while alive, my father-in-law helped her to figure out for who and what to vote. after his death she moved in with us and we have helped her too.
our state votes by mail-in ballot so they are delivered to our home several weeks before elections. we have time to read about the candidates and other proposed legislation before filling out the ballots and getting them in the mail.
the M-I-L physically fills out the ballot and signs that it is her vote. we are not filling it out for her or hiding what candidates were supported but i can imagine that happening (and perhaps on a large scale in nursing homes etc.) if the wrong sort were "helping" the elderly to vote.
here, the signatures are checked for authenticity to validate each vote just like they were when we cast votes at local precincts.
i doubt that ballots are being created out of thin air. they should represent a legitimate voter.

[flamingdem]

19. So it's about not being able to read or understand the ballot

Seems better that they don't vote if there's any doubt about what is being filled in.

[iemitsu]

22. perhaps, but literacy is not a requirement for citizenship.

and literacy tests were thrown out with poll taxes as discriminatory.
besides, illiterate people are not necessarily dumb. they have thinking and coping skills like others. sometimes better.
while studying medieval history i read many testimonial accounts of illiterate peasants, recorded by court scribes that revealed well-informed, well-reasoned, people with well-developed critical thinking skills, among the illiterate peasants of southern france and northern spain.
because these peasants had been accused of heresy they were grilled on every aspect of their lives. the testimony they provided demonstrated that they understood the complexities of the various aspects of their world/universe. from economics to religion they revealed a more sophisticated understanding of many topics than many college educated people i have had the chance to speak with.
yes, people who are dependent (in this case, to read) on others can be abused. it is up to us, as a civilized society, to see that that does not happen.

[flamingdem]

23. interesting to hear about that

connected to this is the issue of literacy in Cuba which is where so many of the Hialeah residents are from - maybe 80%. Castro pulled off a huge literacy campaign after the Revolution there and I'm wondering about this and why people can't read, guess they missed the campaign and left early. I wonder if there are ballots in Spanish. Cuba is a much more oral culture and so many Cubans in Miami don't learn English very well. When I was there it was very funny to have everyone address me in Spanish including the officials at the airport. I asked why and they just shrugged.

[iemitsu]

24. i don't really know anything about the literacy rates of cuban americans.

i am a bit surprised that many would lack these skills as most of the castro haters were educated, well-to-do cubans who lost land, money, and influence as a result of the revolution. resisting learning english is something adults and elderly do more often than young people but again i don't know about florida.
are there new immigrants from cuba? or are the spanish speakers from other parts of latin america?

[flamingdem]

10. Ballot brokers also target Haitian vote

So-called boleteros have long been a part of the political firmament in largely Hispanic enclaves in Miami-Dade. But they are part of a burgeoning cottage industry in the Haitian community.

At Little Haiti’s St. Mary Towers, ballot brokers jockey every election season to see who can get in the doors and collect the most absentee ballots, the elderly residents say.

Brokers tout their skills on Creole-language radio, pitch their services to candidates running for office in cities that boast a sizeable Haitian electorate and even brag about their vote-getting prowess on business cards emblazoned with slogans like “Queen of the absentee ballots.”

So-called boleteros have long been a part of the political firmament in largely Hispanic enclaves in Miami-Dade.

But they are part of a burgeoning cottage industry in the Haitian community — a testament to the increasing power of the Haitian-American vote, as well as a cause for concern for those who worry about potential abuses, especially in the wake of the recent arrests of two ballot brokers in Hialeah.

“In areas where people have less sophistication about the process, the idea of someone helping is more appealing,” said Joseph Centorino, director of Miami-Dade’s Ethics Commission. “This kind of thing tends to happen where there are vulnerable people, people who can be taken advantage of by a political campaign.”

The Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office has set up a task force to investigate all allegations of possible vote fraud.

At least one senior citizen at St. Mary Towers, a beige corner apartment complex for the elderly, s

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/23/3014423/ballot-brokers-also-target-haitian.html#storylink=cpy

[Judi Lynn]

13. Miami has had notoriously dirty elections a long, long time.

Hard to imagine how the politics there could get any slimier.

Imagine a young person aspiring to be a ballot broker when he/she grows up.

Thanks for the info, flamingdem.

[Odin2005]

15. A Miami Cuban RW grifter.

[pscot]

17. Llanes throwing a bottle...

A charming 74-year-old widow. Is this the Onion?

[flamingdem]

18. No! It's Hialeah!

Just North of Miami, got to be one of the corruption capitals of the USA

[pscot]

20. I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I've wondered

for years about the effect of "Latinizing" our politics. To put it delicately, Mexico and central America have different, more colorful political habits than, say, Minnesotans or Washingtonians. Is this corruption qualitatively different, do you think? Or is it just the usual rowdiness of immigrant districts?

[flamingdem]

21. I'm not sure. I think it's the Florida

factor mixed in with immigrants. The whole Cuban drama is mixed in as well with a lot of justification about keeping Republican right wingers in office due to the evils of Fidel! ??