Politics & Government

Stephen Bittel, a real-estate billionaire who enjoyed a short reign as head of the Florida Democratic Party before resigning in disgrace last fall, sexually harassed a female employee by describing his sexual partners’ pubic hair, detailing his pornography preferences, offering to take her shopping for lingerie, and touching her toes on his private jet, according to a new complaint filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.

David Foster and Wayne Ford are likely victims of the great 2018 recount. Foster is a 62-year-old Coral Springs stage designer who usually votes near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, but he was visiting Thailand a month before Election Day. He filled out his ballot and sent it via registered mail October 8…

Florida already has a statewide office of counterterrorism. Despite this, an amendment was placed on the November 6 ballot asking voters if they favored the creation of an “office of domestic security and counterterrorism within [the] department of law enforcement.”

Pepe the Frog is an online meme character popular with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and online fascists. Most politicians would either run screaming from anyone wearing a Pepe T-shirt, or, better yet, tell that person to be ashamed. The Proud Boys, meanwhile, are a far-right,…

Miami-Dade County announced today it has finished counting votes for the 2018 election. But photos obtained by New Times show scores of mail-in ballots sitting inside an Opa-locka mail distribution center — the same center that was evacuated last month after alleged mail bomber Cesar Sayoc’s pipe bombs passed through the facility.

The fraudulent Miami Beach company tied to acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker was being investigated by the FBI as recently as last summer — and might still be in the bureau’s crosshairs, potentially creating a conflict of interest. In a nine-paragraph July 10, 2017 letter obtained by New Times, FBI victim specialist Cinthia…

Claims by Gov. Rick Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio, and President Donald Trump that Democrats are “stealing” the 2018 elections in Broward County have sparked the expected reaction. Despite the fact there appears to be zero evidence backing up the claims, conspiracy theorists, right-wing grifters, and pro-Trump protesters are now descending on the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office.

In 2000, South Florida election lunacy ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court and infected America’s faith in the justice system. This past Thursday, it became almost certain that will happen again in 2018. Forces from both major political parties, led by Republicans with small hands, ranted about buried ballots…

On Thursday, as a new batch of Broward County ballots was counted, the margins grew tighter in several key Florida races. Those slim margins illustrate the importance of every single vote — but at least one overseas voter in Broward says the county elections office botched her ballot, raising questions about whether it was counted at all.

Look, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office sucks. It screwed up in 2000, got caught breaking the law by deleting ballots in 2016, and is in full-scale chaos right now. Oft-embattled Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes says she has no idea how many provisional and absentee ballots are left to be counted in her office.

Due to a combination of racism, Andrew Gillum’s alleged involvement in an FBI investigation, the obvious suppression of 1.4 million formerly incarcerated people’s votes, and a few other factors, Florida’s major statewide races this year were remarkably close. The U.S. Senate race between Bill Nelson and Rick Scott is almost certainly headed to a manual recount.

Just last month, North Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz was under fire for promoting insane, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories linking George Soros to the asylum-seeking migrant caravan traveling from Guatemala to the U.S. border.  Gaetz’s ideas were pretty dang similar to those shared online by the neo-Nazi who shot 11 Jewish worshippers…

Brenda Wilcox is a bigtime supporter of President Donald Trump who believes his election has saved America. She’s also a World Patent Marketing customer who lost $13,000 to the fraudulent company shuttered by the Federal Trade Commission. So she was disturbed to learn on Wednesday that the president tapped a…

Today President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and announced that his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, would become acting attorney general. Whitaker is a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, but he was also involved in a Miami-based invention-marketing company that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shut down last year after calling it a scam.

Ken Detzner, Florida’s secretary of state, once conducted a voter-roll purge so obvious that the U.S. Department of Justice had to swoop in and stop him. Earlier this year, Detzner brazenly tried to prevent the state from opening more early-voting sites at colleges, which a judge said “reveal[ed] a stark pattern of discrimination.”…

On the back deck of a waterfront seafood restaurant in Cutler Bay last night, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell took the microphone as a congresswoman-elect. With her husband and children by her side, the Ecuadorian-born immigrant and Democrat pledged to work every day to hold the Trump administration accountable. “This election right here…

Rick Scott is one of the worst people in America.  It’s fitting, then, that he will follow his eight-year tenure as Florida governor with a new, six-year stint as U.S. senator. Scott, as governor, displayed nothing but bitterness and resentment toward the poor and needy in his state. Low-income people’s…

A frequently cited study from 2002 says if Florida had allowed felons to vote, Al Gore might have defeated George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election. At the time, 827,000 people in Florida had lost the right to vote due to felony convictions. The study’s authors theorized that nearly 70 percent would have voted as Democrats, thus potentially changing the course of history.

Donald Trump has, it seems, been president now for 33 years. Election Night 2016 (shudder) feels like a century ago. So much is different now: Our politics haVE become even more diseased than usual. Corruption and racism no longer disqualify you from holding office. An accused rapist sits on the…

Forty-two percent — that’s how many eligible voters in the United States usually don’t cast ballots. It’s a figure Frank Ocean wants to change. Tuesday, the notoriously reclusive singer made a surprise announcement that he was offering free merchandize in four major U.S. cities — including Miami — to anyone who could prove they had voted.

Compared to various parts of Georgia and New York, voting lines and acts of voter suppression don’t seem to be particularly awful in Miami today. But that doesn’t mean people still aren’t trying to screw some candidates at the last minute. According to screen caps provided to New Times, someone spent yesterday blasting out a fake text message that’s clearly — and laughably — designed to scare voters toward voting for Ron DeSantis or away from the polls entirely.