A sitting commissioner in the sleepy Miami-Dade coastal town of North Bay Village, Hornsby was removed from office Monday after government officials determined he was never eligible to take his post. Turns out, the septuagenarian omitted an unresolved, 25-year-old felony cocaine conviction in Tennessee from his voting registration forms after he moved to Florida in the ’90s, making him an illegal voter and an illegitimate elected official.
Hornsby, whose reason for removal was unusual even for South Florida, now finds himself at the center of a small-town political drama filled with allegations of extortion and retaliation. But given that Florida is months away from voting on a ballot question that could restore the voting rights to an estimated 1.5 million people, here’s a more pressing issue: How exactly does an ineligible voter go unnoticed for 20 years and make it into public office?
The person best able to answer — Hornsby — was not interested in talking.
