Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness made the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. This week, Luke wants the feds to investigate the latest election fraud scandal in Miami-Dade.
President Barack Obama needs to send the Justice Department in to investigate the absentee ballot fraud that is wrecking democracy in Miami-Dade County. We can't trust Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle with any investigations because the scandal leads back to them.
In fact, it took a private investigator named Joe Carrillo to expose the outright theft of votes committed by the absentee ballot brokers allegedly hired by politicians like Gimenez and Rundle. County public corruption detectives and the state attorney recently were forced to open a criminal probe after Carrillo, who says he has no connections to any candidates, gave them leads on two women, Deisy Cabrera and Matilde Martinez.
The next day, while questioning the women, cops found that Cabrera was holding a dozen absentee ballots belonging to other voters. After intense media scrutiny, Rundle finally arrested Cabrera last week on a third-degree felony of absentee ballot fraud and two misdemeanors for illegally possessing more than two ballots belonging to other voters. Rundle has recused herself from the case. She has a possible conflict of interest because her campaign manager, Al Lorenzo, also works for Gimenez's campaign. In past elections, Lorenzo has hired Cabrera to work for him.
Gimenez continues to deny the women were working for him or one of his political consultants. But what else do you expect him to say?
If the state attorney and the county's top elected official are relying on these brokers, who fill out the ballots of the elderly voters they prey on, you know the system won't get fixed anytime soon. This is another scandal that affirms we live in a banana republic. It reminds me of the rampant voter fraud that was uncovered in the 1997 Miami mayoral race, when even dead people were casting ballots.
The way things are going, we'll need Jimmy Carter to monitor the presidential election in November, because I imagine Mitt Romney has already paid bundles of cash to people like Cabrera and Martinez to seal the deal for him. Many politicians and their cronies in Miami-Dade love complaining about Fidel Castro's dictatorship and the lack of free elections in Cuba.
Yet these people want to run Miami-Dade the same way. Along with letting cops shoot and kill innocent people, putting folks who did nothing in jail, taking federal government money from the poor to give to the rich, the politicians like Gimenez and Rundle also want to mess with our elections.
This debacle should motivate Miami-Dade residents to get off their butts and vote on Election Day. If not, then don't complain about the state of our Third World government.
Follow Luke on Twitter @unclelukereal1.
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