Razor-thin Miami-Dade Senate race widens as more ballots are counted
The razor-thin race for Miami-Dade’s Senate District 37 seat widened ever so slightly Thursday night, as Miami Democratic state Sen. Jose Javier Rodríguez fell two more votes behind Republican challenger Ileana Garcia.
Rodríguez began Thursday morning 18 votes behind Latinas for Trump founder Ileana Garcia, but as Miami-Dade election officials counted 220 provisional ballots from across the county into Thursday evening, her lead widened to 20 votes, or .01% percent.
The narrow margin of votes means a likely recount in the race to represent the Hispanic-majority district, which includes Coral Gables, Key Biscayne, Palmetto Bay and Pinecrest. Rodríguez was elected to represent the seat in 2016.
Florida law requires an automatic machine recount if the vote margin is less than .5% and a hand recount if it is less than .25%.
Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee must call a recount, but Miami-Dade election officials said Thursday that a recount is likely to begin Monday.
Counting ballots
In the fight of his political life, Rodriguez held a press conference Thursday outside the Miami-Dade County Election Department building in Doral, where he told supporters the process to count all ballots in the race had begun.
“I am confident that when the process is completed next week, I will prevail,” said Rodríguez, an attorney.
As he addressed supporters, the Miami-Dade canvassing board convened to start reviewing provisional ballots that had been flagged for irregularities. Election officials were briefly delayed, as a flood of ballot “cures” were dropped off before the 5 p.m. deadline.
Voters had until Thursday at 5 p.m. to fix or “cure” an error if their ballot had been rejected. To correct an error, they needed to send a provisional ballot cure affidavit to the elections office to have their vote count.
The board on Thursday was verifying that voters who returned “cured” provisional ballots were eligible to vote, that they had not already voted and that their signatures matched the one on file with the supervisor of elections.
The vote counting machines and walls inside the room where election workers were sorting ballots had signs laminated signs posted in big, black letters: 2020 Senatorial District 37 Recount: Nov. 9, 2020.
Windows in the media room showed dozens of shelves, stacked with white boxes and bustling with election workers.
The workers separated page one, which showed the Senate District 37 race, from page two of the ballot so that a recount could go smoothly. They fished out ballots cast for Senate District 37 during early voting, a period in which voters can cast ballots at any early voting locations and not just in the district.
Miami-Dade Supervisor Christina White could be seen holding ballots with mismatched signatures against a computer screen with each voters’ signature blown up large.
Election officials on Wednesday afternoon had identified 239 provisional ballots cast in Senate District 37. By Thursday night, 220 provisional ballots has been accepted as legal countywide. One hundred twenty-three were ballots cast by District 37 voters.
Of those 123 ballots, 57 votes went to Rodríguez, 69 went to Garcia and seven went to NPA candidate Alex Rodriguez.
As of Thursday afternoon, 2,068 vote-by-mail ballots cast in Miami-Dade were flagged as invalid because of issues like a missing signature, mismatched signature, or other errors that required a cure affidavit, according to Miami-Dade Deputy Supervisor of Elections Suzy Trutie.
Provisional ballots are meant to provide backup for in-person voters if there’s a question about their eligibility when they show up to vote. Vote-by-mail ballots can also be rejected for not having errors like a signature or not having a matching signature.
On Friday, the board will meet again to review provisional ballots leftover from Thursday and all mailed-in ballot cures ahead of a final result certification. White is preparing to move forward with a recount on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a small army of attorneys representing Garcia and Rodriguez and their political allies also buzzed around the room.
Christian Ulvert, an adviser to Rodríguez’s campaign, said in a statement Thursday that “the very best of our democracy is being witnessed as voters are having their votes count and their voices heard in the electoral process.”
Political wrangling
A few hours before the board convened, Garcia’s political camp released a statement that made baseless accusations against Democrats related to the voting process for counting all remaining ballots.
Erin Isaac, a spokeswoman for Senate Republican campaigns, claimed “numerous voters” who were eligible to fix issues like missing or mismatched signatures on their absentee ballots were visited by someone falsely claiming to be with the Republican Party.
Isaac did not provide evidence to back the claims, arguing that “the last thing we want to do is have these voters subjected to further intimidation.” She did not answer when asked if election officials had been notified or if a complaint had been filed with election officials.
Trutie told the Herald that the elections department was not aware of any such issue. Rodríguez’s campaign said the accusations were a “lie,” and a “scare tactic” meant to discourage voters correcting issues on their ballots.
“There were some accusations made today. That’s all they are, accusations. It’s attempt to muddy the waters ... and that is highly disrespectful to this process,” Rodríguez said at the press conference Thursday.
Garcia has not responded to requests for comment from the Herald since Wednesday morning, and was not present at the elections department on Thursday.
The third-party surprise
Keeping Rodríguez in his seat was a key priority for Senate Democrats, who pumped more than $300,000 into his campaign to help with polling, research, campaign staff and political consulting.
Garcia, a former television personality and the founder of Latinas for Trump, posed a challenge to that goal as she is close to flipping the seat, which would add to the GOP majority in the chamber.
Garcia’s bid for the Florida Senate was backed by Senate Republicans and Gov. Ron DeSantis, and tried to win over voters in the Hispanic-majority district by casting Rodríguez as an extreme or socialist sympathizer, a political tactic that resonated in Miami, which is home to hundreds of thousands of residents who fled Latin American countries led by authoritarian regimes.
In the weeks leading up to the election, voters in the district were flooded with ads from a mystery donor who tried to promote Alex Rodríguez, a little-known third party candidate who did not actively campaign.
Alex Rodríguez’s name on the ballot presented an opportunity to confuse voters. He shared the same last name as the incumbent Democratic state senator, and earned 6,367 votes, or about 3% of the vote.
When the mailers popped up, Senate Democrats accused Republicans of coordinating a “dark money effort to siphon votes from Democratic candidates” to “help weak Republican candidates.” Republicans declined to comment on the mailers.
The Miami Herald has been unable to reach Alex Rodríguez over the course of several weeks. A Herald reporter on Thursday afternoon tried to reach him at his Palmetto Bay house, but no one answered the door despite signs of people being there.
Most houses in the Palmetto Bay neighborhood had political yard signs, but Alex Rodríguez’s house showed no signs of his or any campaign. He was also a no-show at the board meeting Thursday.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 11:04 AM.
