“I trust them so little that I know that they are going to be corrupt one way or the other,” said Adrian Jelenszky, 40, outside a West Miami-Dade fire station precinct. “The corruption is not going to stop, because that is just the nature of the beast.”

Another criticism leveled against the proposal: that the term limits would not apply retroactively to sitting commissioners. Two of them have been in office for nearly two decades.

“If the amendment had been approved, there would be certain commissioners that would basically be there until 2020, and that’s just not acceptable to the public,” said Norman Braman, the Miami auto billionaire who financed last year’s historic recall of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez.

Braman had declared a batch of six charter amendments on the ballot last May to be inadequate, and all failed at the polls. This time around, Braman did not use his wealth or considerable political clout to campaign against the proposals, though he decried both amendments as falling far short of true reform.

Braman, who wouldn’t say Tuesday night how he voted, called the election results “a message of no-confidence in the commission.”

Commissioners, after begrudgingly agreeing to put only the two watered-down amendments on the ballot, did not campaign for the compromise salaries and term-limits proposal put forth by commissioners Lynda Bell and Rebeca Sosa.

Elected officials are usually loath to call for their own term limits or campaign to increase their salaries; proponents of the changes risk alienating their colleagues by campaigning too forcefully for changes they don’t all want.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who promised on the campaign trail last year to push for charter changes, backed the proposals but, amid a battle over employee union concessions, did not actively advocate for them.

The measure that did pass, sponsored by Commissioner Esteban Bovo, will double to 120 days the period for collecting petition signatures for future proposed charter amendments. It will also require placing them on the next general election ballot — instead of scheduling a special election — to save money and draw larger turnout.

“I’m happy,” Bovo said late Tuesday, noting that he and other commissioners pushed the board last year to discuss the 2008 Charter Reform Task Force recommendations. “I continue to believe that it was a good idea that issues that were literally stuck in a drawer for three years were brought to the voters.”

Fearing dismal turnout for Tuesday’s election, Jorge Luis Lopez, a member of the county’s 2008 task force, paid out of his own pocket last week for a robocall reminding about 23,000 voters with outstanding absentee ballots to mail them in.

“My thought was, ‘Let’s just make sure everybody knows that there’s an election, especially for non-Republicans,’ ” Lopez said. Though he backed the proposals, he did not urge call listeners to vote for them — just to vote.

A poll taken two weeks ago by Bendixen & Amandi International for The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, WFOR-CBS 4 and Univisión 23 showed voters divided on the amendments, an indication that those undecided or on the fence could ultimately oppose both measures or abstain from voting on them at all.

On Tuesday, many Republicans who voted for a presidential candidate said they left the charter questions empty.

“I didn’t know anything about those,” said Ana De Los Reyes, 56, after voting at Belén Jesuit Preparatory School in West Miami-Dade. “Rather than vote for something I don’t know about, I left them out.”

Miami Herald staff writers Howard Cohen, Lidia Dinkova, Alexa Lopez, Michael Vasquez and Christina Veiga contributed to this report.