Extensive Miami Herald report:

“Absentee ballots seem to be prone to manipulation,” said Joe Centorino, director of Miami-Dade’s Ethics Commission and a former assistant state attorney who prosecuted several vote-fraud cases stemming from Miami’s tainted 1997 mayoral election. “Once those ballots go out, there’s no more control.”

But despite the recurring fraud problems, state lawmakers have repeatedly loosened the state’s absentee voting rules, making it easier to vote from home — while also making vote fraud harder to detect, critics say.

At the same time, the state has increased scrutiny of in-person voters by requiring those voters to provide photo ID at the polling place — a burden that absentee voters don’t have to bear.

“It is clearly easier to vote, with less obstacles, absentee than in person at the polls. And there’s more room for shenanigans,” said Murray Greenberg, the former Miami-Dade County Attorney who now teaches election law at the Florida International University College of Law.

In recent years, the Republican Party of Florida has aggressively promoted high absentee turnout among GOP voters. Republicans have dominated the Legislature as it has loosened absentee voting rules and cut the number of days for early voting, which tends to favor Democrats.