Miami voters need large, safe and accessible early voting sites, not voter suppression from political candidates.

Miami’s voters deserve the biggest, most accessible, safest polling places possible. The city has suffered enough as a global infection hotspot where over 2,600 Americans have died from COVID-19 this year. To protect voter health and voting rights, the American Airlines Arena must be designated as an early voting location for the city, and not the smaller, congested Frost museum, with its limited parking. The National Election Defense Coalition urges the city administration to reverse their misguided decision and accept the Miami Heat’s NBA franchise first-class arena for the safety and convenience of early voters, in 2020 and future elections.

Turning down the Miami Heat’s gracious offer deprives the city’s residents of a precious public resource.

The vast American Airlines Arena (AAA) is surrounded by a four-lane loop road with multi-directional access and egress. It is built for consistent, easy traffic flow of large volumes of cars. In contrast, the Frost Museum’s website succinctly describes its on-site parking spaces as “limited” while noting that “the garage can fill up quickly during peak museum hours and weekends.”

For those worried about election security, the Arena provides a complete security solution with trained staff for every game, far more than a typical polling place.

The nonpartisan Mayor of Miami-Dade County has extraordinary leeway over the choice of polling places. However, as he himself is running a partisan race for the US House of Representatives, the choice to use an inferior voting site is not only questionable from a logistical perspective, it is dangerously close to appearing in service of suppressing the vote. We believe Mayor Gimenez should prevent any appearance of conflict in his approach to governing the voting rights of the citizens of Florida’s largest city.

Given the lack of necessary funding and therefore reliability of the USPS during the COVID 19 pandemic, we emphasize three ways for Americans to vote safely and protect their ballot:

• Find a good early voting location with plenty of space for social distancing or outdoor areas.
• Receive ballots by mail, but drop off the ballots in person, at an attended voting precinct or precinct drop-off box.
• Cast votes by mail as early as possible, and check their receipt (possible in Miami-Dade) to make sure their ballots were received and processed.

Miami’s AAA is a perfect location for in-person early and Election Day voting, and for voters to drop off their ballots, which requires sufficient parking and driving space. StadiumParkingGuides.com reports the AAA has 5,900 nearby parking spaces. Florida’s Department of Transportation reports that up to 40,000 cars daily can use the stretch of Biscayne Boulevard where the arena is located.

Mayor Gimenez noted that the Frost Museum is on a MetroMover station, but the roadway and mass transit station share a single entry with only two lanes to access the site. Meanwhile, the AAA is also located one block from a MetroMover mass transit station.

Behind the city’s grand signature arena sits Dan Paul Plaza, a 4-acre site owned by the Miami-Dade Internal Services Division. Able to support heavy logistics or to park up to 750 cars outdoors, the Plaza could easily house election drive-through operations, or support voting activities and logistics, honoring its namesake’s legacy as a civil rights advocate and legendary 1st Amendment lawyer.

We believe it is appropriate for Mayor Gimenez to recuse himself from all further issues and decisions about the operations of the 2020 general election. The Supervisor of Elections should be given latitude to review the county’s decision not to use the American Airlines Arena, without facing consequences if she reverses course.

Otherwise, Carlos Gimenez runs the risk that his legacy will be tainted by accusations that he deliberately suppressed the vote in an election where he is a candidate, similar to Georgia’s oft-pilloried Governor Brian Kemp or former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

We strongly encourage the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections to do the right thing and work with the Miami Heat and the NBA to make their arena into a beacon of hope just like its neighbor, the city’s iconic Freedom Tower.