JEFF LEEN, DON VAN NATTA Jr. AND BETTY CORTINA Herald Staff Writers

Dozens of absentee ballots cast in the Hialeah mayoral race last week were obtained with questionable voter signatures that have now sparked a lawsuit and an FBI investigation. Convicted felon Raul Martinez regained the mayor's office thanks to an overwhelming margin in the absentee vote. Handwriting experts hired by The Miami Herald say that at least 36 signatures on absentee ballot application forms clearly do not match the signatures on the voter certificates that accompanied the ballots.

Without a signed request, voters cannot get absentee ballots delivered to them. Normally, the signature on the application form should match that on the actual ballot certificate.

"There is no question that they are indeed forgeries," said Edward Whittaker, who has spent 31 years doing handwriting analysis, after studying 18 signatures submitted by The Herald.

Since the ballots are secret, it is unknown which candidate benefited from the questionable signatures. But many of the questionable signatures appear on ballots that were later witnessed by members of the Martinez campaign.

Martinez, who was convicted of extortion in 1991 after five terms as mayor, won by a scant 273 votes over Nilo Juri in a runoff election Nov. 9. Martinez trailed at the polling places, but still managed to win thanks to a nearly 2-to-1 difference in absentee votes, 826 to 448.

Juri filed a lawsuit Friday contesting Martinez's election. He asked Dade Circuit Judge Margarita Esquiroz to throw out all absentee ballots and declare him the winner based on votes cast at polling places.

"There is a question (about) the integrity of the absentee- balloting process," Juri said in a press conference at his lawyer's office. "It's only fair that the citizens of Hialeah (be) given the opportunity to prove" whether the election was conducted fairly or not. Mayor Martinez did not return a call from a reporter. His wife, Angela, defended his campaign Friday.

"As far as I know, everything is legitimate," she said. "We don't commit fraud."

The Herald has also learned that the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office are investigating Hialeah's absentee balloting as part of a huge probe of vote fraud throughout Dade County.

Sources say the investigation, which has involved more than a dozen FBI agents for more than a year, will result in the arrest of more than 300 people for election fraud throughout Dade.

"It will change the way Dade County politics operates," said a source with detailed knowledge of the investigation.

Metro elections officials expressed dismay about the questionable signatures and said they would tighten their procedures for absentee balloting.

The problem appears to occur when a voter has a third party pick up an absentee ballot. The third party must present a voter's ID card, such as a voter registration card, and a request signed by the voter. That signature is checked against the voter's signature stored in county elections computers.

Election officials are now concerned that absentee ballots may have been handed out without enough scrutiny by Metro election clerks.

"They may not have been as diligent as they should have been," said Assistant Metro Elections Supervisor James Kohanek, acknowledging that the process is open to abuse.

"Of course the potential is there," Kohanek said. "That is why we are so concerned. People are willing to give their ID card to a perfect stranger. Who knows if they punched the ballot?"

With the Hialeah mayor's race going down to the wire, the two campaigns were under tremendous pressure to generate votes, both at the polls and through absentee ballots. Election officials can't remember a Hialeah race where so many absentee ballots came in so late on the day of the voting.

A study of the ballots shows that Martinez's campaign, as well as Juri's, mounted massive and fevered efforts to enlist absentee voters. Martinez's longtime personal secretary, Mabel Mizrahi, signed as a witness on 50 absentee ballots in the days before the runoff.

"I don't know how many but I know I went to many places," Mizrahi said. "Everything was done, as far as I am concerned, legally."

Mizrahi said that voters called the campaign office asking for absentee ballots, and campaign workers helped obtain them after getting voter registration cards and a signed form.

"Everything has got to match: the ballot, the voter registration card and the form," Mizrahi said. "The Elections Department checks that signature. You have to take the voter registration card together with a form. They're very strict about that."

But the two court-certified handwriting experts hired by The Herald said many signatures do not match.

"They're all bad," said Nona Fried, a handwriting expert with Cote-Fried Associates in Hollywood, after examining 36 absentee ballot certificates and their application forms. "They're so obvious that it's almost scary."

Voters whose signatures did not match on their applications and ballots had a variety of responses and told Herald reporters that, in general, they were unconcerned.

"Everything was perfectly legitimate," Concepcion Serra said. "We voted for who we wanted to vote for and no one told us what to do."

Serra said she called the Martinez campaign to have them get her an absentee ballot. She said she never signed the ballot application but did sign the voter's certificate that accompanied the ballot.

Luis Nicolas Cruz, 63, said he and his wife had requested absentee ballots because she was leaving for New Jersey during the election. Cruz said his daughter arranged for him to vote.

His daughter, who would not give her name, insisted that the signatures were legitimate and that her father sometimes signs his name slightly differently on bank forms and other documents.

"That's his signature," she said. "Everything is legitimate."

But when asked if both signatures on the forms were his, Cruz stated, "It's either mine or my daughter's."

Eduardo Margolles, 70, was in California during the runoff election, and his wife, Hilda E. Margolles, 69, said she signed the application for him, with his permission. Both voted for Raul Martinez for mayor.

"I signed because he was in California," she said, explaining that he'd left suddenly to visit a sick family member.

Herald staff writers Ann Davis, Dexter Filkins, David Hancock and Charles Strouse contributed to this report.