State Democrats sued Bush for using the state seal on his letter, but the suit was dismissed last week by a Leon County judge. I had no supervisory duties or involvement whatsoever'' in actually gathering the ballots. Suarez lost his mayoral seat in 1998 after courts ruled he benefited from a massive absentee vote fraud scheme organized by supporters, though a judge found no evidence that Suarez participated. He said he didn't know why the Republicans seemed to have more success. He said the Democrats would investigate election records and interview voters.
Absentee balloting has a long and crooked history in Florida politics.
In the 1997 Miami race, a Herald investigation found scores of forged ballots, votes from people who lived outside Miami, and one ballot from a dead voter. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested 58 people after an investigation. An FDLE study found six other cases of absentee ballot fraud around the state since 1988. In at least two, the election was overturned. Election supervisors in Florida's 67 counties are supposed to carefully check absentee ballots and throw out any votes they consider suspect.