"My vote was stolen, " Perez said, her eyes welling with tears. "They know our eyesight is not good and we are not well. What kind of person would take advantage of the elderly?"

Manuel Ramudo, 87, said somebody who brought him Suarez campaign literature punched his ballot when he wasn't looking. When Ramudo complained, he said the man told him: "You've already voted."

The witness name on the ballot: Miguel Amador, a Suarez campaign volunteer arrested by state investigators for allegedly offering to buy three absentee ballots.

Amador's lawyer "vehemently" denied his client punched Ramudo's ballot.

A criminal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has so far produced two other arrests of campaign aides, including Hernandez's law-office secretary and Alberto Russi, a 92-year-old former produce vendor who allegedly witnessed a ballot for a dead man. Agents say they expect to make more arrests soon.

START OF TRIAL

Carollo has sued to overturn the election, alleging that Suarez benefited from widespread ballot fraud. The nonjury trial begins Monday.

After checking just over 3 percent of ballots cast on Nov. 4, including both absentee and at the polls, The Herald has documented 175 invalid votes. Carollo fell short of winning the first round outright by just 155 votes.

The Herald investigation found only a handful of questionable ballots linked to other campaigns. The most serious claim against the Carollo campaign was made by Juana Riera, who said Carollo volunteer Jorge Diaz grabbed her ballot and punched it while her back was turned. Diaz vehemently denies the allegations.

During the fall campaign, Suarez and Hernandez supporters worked hand in hand to gather votes. At least a dozen people were actively soliciting votes for both candidates. A couple of those workers were paid by both campaigns. When some voters called Suarez headquarters to have their ballots picked up, Hernandez workers wound up signing them as witnesses.

"There is no question that people who were working for me were supporting Suarez. And people working for Suarez were supporting me, " Hernandez said.

APPOINTMENTS FOLLOWED

After the election, Suarez appointed Hernandez, who is awaiting trial on bank-fraud and money-laundering charges, to chair the commission. And some campaign workers who helped gather illicit votes have been hired for city jobs and named to city boards.

One common campaign tactic: registering out-of-town or out-of-district voters at homes in District 3, thus making them eligible to vote for both Suarez and Hernandez. Hernandez supporter Alfredo Perez recounted in an interview how campaign workers recruited him to cast a bad ballot a month before the Nov. 4 election.

"I approached Humberto Hernandez's father because I've known him for years, from way back in Cuba when I was a police sergeant in Havana and Humbertico's grandfather was a councilman in Cuba, and I told him that I was ready to help with the campaign in anything they needed, " said Perez, who lives outside District 3.

"He thanked me, and eventually a campaign worker asked me for my voter registration card. They took it away and later called me to fill out some forms to change the registration to an address within Humberto Hernandez's district -- 1601 SW Second Ave."

"The Hernandez campaign is the one that supplied that address. I don't know who lives there or how they came up with it, " Perez said. "But I understood that it was an address that was convenient to the campaign."