JEFF LEEN And DEXTER FILKINS Herald Staff Writers

A Hialeah voter says someone forged her signature on an absentee ballot in that city's Nov. 9 election, providing the strongest indication yet of fraud in the runoff that returned Raul Martinez to the mayor's office. Mercedes Rodriguez says she could not have voted because she was out of the country visiting her sick mother, and she provided travel documents to prove it.

Her passport and an airline ticket show that she left Miami on Nov. 4 for the Dominican Republic, not returning until Jan. 3. County election records indicate that the woman's absentee ballot was given to campaign workers for Martinez on Nov. 5, and returned with what appears to be her signature on Nov. 8.

"This is not mine," said Rodriguez, 63, when shown a copy of the ballot bearing her purported signature. "This is not right. I don't know who put it there."

The suspect ballot was witnessed by Lula Rodriguez, a top assistant to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Lula Rodriguez is not related to Mercedes Rodriguez.

Lula Rodriguez is Mayor Martinez's sister-in-law, and helped out briefly in the campaign while visiting Miami. She said Tuesday that she did nothing wrong, and suggested that Mercedes Rodriguez might be lying.

The loser of Hialeah's hotly contested mayoral election, Nilo Juri, has sued the winner, Martinez. Juri alleges that the election was tainted by absentee-ballot fraud.

Martinez won by 273 votes, thanks to a near 2-1 margin in 1,274 absentee ballots, out of 28,807 ballots cast.

When she got back into the United States Monday, Mercedes Rodriguez provided a sworn statement to Juri's investigators, and separately granted an interview to The Miami Herald.

Lula Rodriguez, who witnessed 13 absentee ballots for the Martinez campaign, speculated Tuesday that Mercedes Rodriguez might have gotten someone else to vote for her while she was out of town, and is now making up a story to get out of trouble.

"Maybe she's lying, and that's a possibility," Lula Rodriguez said. "Be very careful, because maybe this lady said to someone, 'Please vote for me. I want to vote for Raul Martinez .' Now maybe she's afraid she's done something wrong."

Mercedes Rodriguez responded: "That's not true."

Mayor Martinez, who has repeatedly refused over the past two months to discuss the Hialeah election with Herald reporters, did not return a message requesting an interview. His secretary, Mabel Mizrahi, said the campaign worked hard to ensure that absentee ballots were handled properly.

"I don't know who the lady is," Mizrahi said. "Who knows if this lady is telling the truth or not?"

Mizrahi said campaign workers did not check the IDs of people filling out absentee ballots at the Martinez campaign headquarters in the hectic days leading up to the runoff.

"We were too naive," Mizrahi said. "We didn't ask for all the information that we were supposed to. Now we know that it's good to ask for a photo ID or something like that."

Aside from Juri's lawsuit, the Martinez election victory is the subject of an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Dade state attorney's office and the U.S. attorney's office.

Martinez is a convicted felon , found guilty by a federal jury of shaking down developers. He has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, but is out -- and was allowed to run for office -- pending an appeal.

Juri attorneys said their handwriting expert has stated that Mercedes Rodriguez did not sign her ballot.

"Our expert has confirmed that there was a forgery on the ballot," said attorney Stephen Murty. "This is one of the many that we've found, and we're still investigating."

Martinez' attorney, Richard Gross, said the statements by Mercedes Rodriguez do not prove anything.

"You have one woman," Gross said. "The fact that you have found only one person after two months of devoting The Herald's assets to trying to determine whether vote fraud occurred says it all."

Neither Martinez nor Juri got enough votes in the Nov. 2 election, and a runoff was scheduled for Nov. 9.

With only days to go, both campaigns mounted frenzied efforts to generate absentee ballots.

Mercedes Rodriguez said someone from the Martinez campaign phoned her Nov. 3 to ask if she was going to vote in the runoff.

Mizrahi, Martinez's secretary, disputed that. She said the campaign got absentee ballots only for voters who called the office asking for help.

Mercedes Rodriguez said when the Martinez workers called, she told them she was leaving the country and they said she could vote absentee. She said two men came to her house and had her sign a form authorizing them to pick up her ballot.

She said one of the Martinez workers told her that was all she needed to do.

"I asked him, 'This is really voting?" she said. "And he told me, 'Yes, you voted absentee.' "

She left the country the next day, Nov. 4, to visit her mother in the Dominican Republic. On Nov. 5, county records show, her ballot was picked up from the Metro elections department by Mirta de la Paz, a Martinez campaign worker. De la Paz hung up on a Herald reporter when asked about the ballot Monday night.

"Sir, I don't have to answer that question," De la Paz said. "Bye-bye."

The filled-in ballot was returned to Metro on Nov. 8, the day before the election, bearing Mercedes Rodriguez's purported signature.

Lula Rodriguez, Reno's assistant, signed it as a witness. She said Tuesday she did not remember this particular ballot, but said she signed as a witness only on ballots that she personally observed being signed by voters.

"I would not have signed something without the person signing in front of me," she said. "I would not have signed something just for the purpose of expediting something."

She said she did not check the signer's ID before adding her signature as a witness.

Lula Rodriguez said she witnessed the ballots at the Martinez campaign headquarters while she was lending moral support to her sister, Angela, Martinez's wife.

Asked if she had ever been to the Martinez headquarters, Mercedes Rodriguez replied: "Never." She said she has never met Lula Rodriguez.

"I don't know this lady," Mercedes Rodriguez said.

Of the 12 other absentee ballots that Lula Rodriguez witnessed, one other voter said she signed her ballot at home, and one said he voted at his place of business. Six refused to talk to Herald reporters, two said they voted at the Martinez headquarters and two could not be reached for comment.

An absentee voter must give a reason why he or she can't go to the polls. On Mercedes Rodriguez's ballot, somebody checked a line that says: "I am unable without another's assistance to attend the polls."

Mercedes Rodriguez said that statement is false.

"I walk, I drive, I go to work," she said. "I never signed this kind of paper."

Indeed, in the first round of voting on Nov. 2, Mercedes Rodriguez said she went to Precinct 338 to cast her ballot for Raul Martinez .

Of the 13 absentee ballots bearing Lula Rodriguez's signature, eight are marked "unable without another's assistance to attend the polls." All eight of those voters hold current Florida driver's licenses, five unrestricted and three requiring only corrective lenses.

The suspect Mercedes Rodriguez ballot was also witnessed by Maeby Garcia, a former administrative assistant for Martinez. Garcia said she only witnessed ballots when she saw the person voting in front of her.

Garcia, along with Lula Rodriguez and Mabel Mizrahi, suggested that Mercedes Rodriguez might have allowed somebody to vote in her stead.

"We weren't checking IDs. If I'm guilty of anything, I'm guilty of being naive," Garcia said. "If she said she was out of the country, then she had somebody go to the headquarters and sign it because somebody requested the Mercedes Rodriguez absentee ballot."

If Juri's lawyers can prove a significant degree of fraud, that would give a judge the option of throwing out all absentee ballots. That would leave Juri the winner, on the basis of a 105-vote margin in the machine balloting at voting precincts.

But attorney Gross, who is defending Martinez in the lawsuit, said the Juri camp has failed to establish that the election was tainted.

"They're really asking the court to let them go on a fishing expedition," Gross said.

A hearing is scheduled Jan. 12.

"No attorney wants to contest an election," said Jay Tome, a Juri lawyer. "Democracy says when the people speak, the people speak, and you have to abide by it.

"But this goes to the heart of the process. If anybody obtains office through a fraudulent process, then the people haven't spoken."