Discussion regarding voter protections. (Sponsored by Mayor Lago)

RESOLUTION: CONDEMNING ANONYMOUS POLITICAL PHISHING OPERATIONS CITY OF CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA CITY COMMISSION RESOLUTION NO. -26 A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA, CONDEMNING THE USE OF FICTITIOUS ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITIES AND DECEPTIVE DIGITAL INTERFACES TO CONDUCT ANONYMOUS POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE-GATHERING OPERATIONS AGAINST CORAL GABLES VOTERS AND TO SUBVERT THE CITY’S PUBLIC RECORDS INFRASTRUCTURE; CALLING UPON STATE AND FEDERAL AUTHORITIES TO INVESTIGATE; DIRECTING THE CITY ATTORNEY TO PURSUE ALL AVAILABLE LEGAL REMEDIES INCLUDING RECOVERY OF DIVERTED PUBLIC RECORDS; AND PROVIDING FOR AN EFFECTIVE DATE. WHEREAS, the City of Coral Gables has a long and proud tradition of transparent, ethical, and participatory democratic governance, and its residents are entitled to engage in the municipal electoral process free from deception, coercion, and covert manipulation; WHEREAS, the City Commission has become aware that on or about March 18-19, 2026, an anonymous political actor distributed electronic survey communications to Coral Gables residents — including to the official city government email address of Mayor Vincent Lago — through SurveyMonkey, using the fictitious organizational identity “Analytics 305” and the domain analytics305.ai, soliciting information about residents’ voting intentions with respect to the April 21, 2026 Special Mail Ballot Election; WHEREAS, the account used to deploy this survey is registered to an individual identified only by the email address alex@analytics305.ai; no organization called “Analytics 305” is registered with the Florida Department of State, the Florida Division of Elections, or any other public authority; and the communication contains no sponsoring organization disclosure as required under Florida Statute §106.143 for electioneering communications; WHEREAS, the survey communication was engineered with a deliberately deceptive interface design: answer options were embedded directly in the email body as disguised hyperlinks styled to resemble inline response bubbles, such that a recipient would reasonably believe that clicking an answer would send a reply through the email chain; in fact, clicking any answer option launched the recipient's web browser and directed them to a SurveyMonkey survey page entirely outside the email system, capturing their response in a private anonymous SurveyMonkey account with no record remaining in the email chain, the city’s records system, or any channel! accessible to the public; WHEREAS, Mayor Lago received this communication at his official city government email address; under Florida Statute §119.011(12), his response to official correspondence received at that address in connection with an upcoming city election constitutes a public record required to be retained in the city’s records system and subject to public records requests; the deceptive embedded-link design of this email was engineered to divert any such response away from the city’s records infrastructure and into a private anonymous account before the Mayor could have realized that his response had left the email chain, thereby subverting Florida’s public records law by design; WHEREAS, this conduct potentially implicates Florida Statute §119.10 (public records violation), Florida Statute §815.062 (offenses against governmental entities), Florida Statute §815.06(2)(a) (Florida Computer Crimes Act), Florida Statute §843.03 (obstruction by disguised person), Florida Statute §817.06 (false representation), and Florida Statute §501.204 (Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act), in addition to SurveyMonkey’s own Terms of Service; WHEREAS, forensic analysis of the email headers reveals the communication was sent through SparkPost infrastructure (IP 192.174.81.52, Job ID 53730) originating from Amazon Web Services (IP 44.238.58.2, us-west-2), composed using Microsoft Exchange, and deployed through a SurveyMonkey tracked email collector — reflecting a level of technical sophistication consistent with an organized and funded political operation; WHEREAS, a substantially similar prior operation was conducted under the fictitious name “People Count USA” through the domain peoplecountusa.com, using Mailchimp to target Coral Gables voters without sponsoring organization disclosure; that operation was the subject of a John Doe lawsuit, court order, and identification of the responsible individual; Mailchimp was compelled to produce account records through legal process; and ethics complaints are currently pending before the Florida Commission on Ethics; WHEREAS, DNS forensic investigation has established that analytics305.ai was registered May 9, 2023 and peoplecountusa.com was registered August 20, 2023 — within three months of each other — consistent with the coordinated advance preparation of a multi-instrument covert political operation toolkit; WHEREAS, the two operations share a common operational signature: fictitious civic- sounding organizational names, Miami area code branding, anonymous digital infrastructure, bilingual English-Spanish voter targeting, deployment immediately preceding Coral Gables municipal elections, session-gated content visible only to targeted recipients, and no sponsoring organization disclosure; WHEREAS, the City of Coral Gables has direct institutional standing as a victim of these operations, and the City Attorney has independent grounds to pursue remedies including recovery of any official response data diverted from the city’s records system and subpoenaed from the platforms involved; WHEREAS, the City Commission finds that the integrity of the democratic process and the public records infrastructure of Coral Gables require immediate public condemnation, referral to investigative authorities, the City Attorney’s pursuit of all available remedies, and the development of robust municipal-level voter protection measures;

NOW, THEREFORE,

BE IT RESOLVED by the City Commission of the City of Coral Gables, Florida, that: Section 1. The City Commission hereby formally and unequivocally condemns: (a) the use of fictitious organizational identities and anonymous digital infrastructure to conduct covert political intelligence-gathering operations against Coral Gables voters; and (b) the deliberate engineering of deceptive email interfaces designed to divert an elected official's official response away from the city’s public records system and into a private anonymous account without the official’s knowledge or consent. The Commission declares such conduct to be contrary to the democratic values of this city, harmful to the integrity of its electoral process and public records infrastructure, and potentially criminal under Florida law. Section 2. The City Commission hereby calls upon the Florida Commission on Ethics, the Florida Elections Commission, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, the Florida Attorney General, and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida to investigate the Analytics 305 operation and its connection to prior documented operations targeting Coral Gables voters, and to pursue all appropriate enforcement action. Section 3. The City Attorney is hereby directed to: (a) evaluate all available civil and criminal referral options; (b) submit formal complaints to SurveyMonkey, SparkPost, Amazon Web Services, GoDaddy, and DONUTS Registry requesting preservation and voluntary disclosure of account records; (c) pursue all available legal remedies to compel the recovery and restoration of any official response data belonging to the city’s public records that was diverted to the alex@analytics305.ai SurveyMonkey account; and (d) report back to the Commission within thirty (30) days. Section 4. The City Manager is hereby directed to coordinate with the City Clerk and City Attorney to develop a Voter Protection Legislative Package for presentation to the Commission no later than-sixty (60) days from the date of this Resolution, incorporating provisions for: political survey disclosure and registration with the City Clerk; prohibition on shell organization political activity; voter intimidation and deceptive communication reporting mechanisms; and political domain registration transparency requirements. Section 5. The City Clerk is directed to transmit certified copies of this Resolution to the Florida Commission on Ethics, the Florida Elections Commission, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, the Florida Attorney General, and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Section 6. This Resolution shall take effect immediately upon adoption. PASSED AND ADOPTED by the City Commission of the City of Coral Gables, Florida, this day of March, 2026. Vincent Lago, Mayor City Clerk Approved as to form and legal sufficiency: City Attorney