Jeffrey Garcia, Congressman Joe Garcia’s (no relation) chief of staff has been implicated in a “sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests,” according to the Miami Herald.
Friday afternoon, Garcia said he had asked Jeffrey Garcia, no relation, for his resignation after the chief of staff — also the congressman’s top political strategist — took responsibility for the plot. Hours earlier, law enforcement investigators raided the homes of another of Joe Garcia’s employees and a former campaign aide in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter.
“I’m shocked and disappointed about this,” Garcia, who said he was unaware of the scheme, told The Miami Herald. “This is something that hit me from left field. Until today, I had no earthly idea this was going on.”
Jeffrey Garcia, 40, declined to comment. He also worked last year on the campaign of Democrat Patrick Murphy of Jupiter, who unseated tea-party Republican congressman Allen West. Murphy has not been implicated in the phantom-requests operation.
The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office, seeking electronic equipment such as computers, served search warrants Friday at the homes of Giancarlo Sopo, 30, Joe Garcia’s communications director; and John Estes, 26, his 2012 campaign manager. Neither Estes nor Sopo responded to requests for comment.
A third search warrant was also executed, though it wasn’t clear where.
Joe Garcia said he would likely put Sopo on administrative leave for the time being.
The raids marked a sign of significant progress in the probe that prosecutors reopened in February, after a Herald investigation found that hundreds of 2,552 fraudulent requests for the Aug. 14 primaries originated from Internet Protocol addresses in Miami. The bulk of the requests were masked by foreign IP addresses.
It is unclear if the requests from domestic and foreign IP addresses are related to the same operatives.
The Miami Herald found that the ballot requests were clustered and targeted Democratic voters in Garcia’s congressional district and Republican voters in two Florida House of Representatives districts, indicating a concerted effort by a mystery computer hacker or hackers.
Quick quiz: What party does Mr. Garcia represent? The entire 1500 word article never says. The only hint is when we discover that the scheme also touched another Democrat, as Jeffrey Gracia also worked for Rep. Patrick Murphy’s campaign.
While there was no massive fraud because computers caught the scheme before anyone could actually vote, the case should raise a big red flag about online voting and registration. There are too many clever nerds out there who can game the system and perhaps, defeat the countermeasures taken by authorities.
Any computer security system can be hacked — we’ve seen some of our most sensitive systems penetrated. Just because it makes it easier to vote or register to vote doesn’t mean that online access to the ballot is an improvement. Florida was lucky this time. One wonders if other states with similar access haven’t been quite as fortunate.
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