MIAMI — Alina Garcia, Miami-Dade’s elections supervisor, now has a cartoon avatar who stars in a tax-funded coloring book about democracy and, this fall, looked out from lapel pins that were distributed to poll workers.

Like Garcia, “Super Ali” has long blonde hair, but Super Ali has a red cape and a star-spangled ballot box for a body. That cartoon ballot box has a seal with Garcia’s name on it.

“These are great tools for engagement with our youngest citizens, to create a voting culture,” Elections spokesperson Juan Mendieta said of the Super Ali swag the Elections Department is funding.

In August, the Elections Department paid $1,160 for 1,000 of the Super Ali pins. The next month, the department paid $1,560 for 1,500 “Guardians of Democracy” coloring books, which have Garcia’s name and Super Ali on the cover. Mendieta provided invoices for the purchases at the Miami Herald’s request this week.

Inside the coloring book, there are voters, candidates and ballot boxes to color, plus a crossword and word search that both have “Alina Garcia” as clues.

Garcia, a Republican, is Miami-Dade’s first elected supervisor of elections — a post that used to be a department head under the county’s mayor. That changed in 2024 when a state constitutional amendment required Miami-Dade voters to choose an elections supervisor to run the newly independent office. That means Garcia faces reelection herself in 2028.

Garcia’s dual roles as elections administrator and Republican politician have drawn scrutiny this year. She spoke out publicly in favor of Amendment 3, the tax-cut referendum that appeared on ballots her staff distributed and counted.

On election night, she also correctly predicted Republican incumbent María Elvira Salazar would maintain her tiny lead in a congressional race heading for a recount. Local Democrats cited both public statements by Garcia in an attempt to get her removed from a ballot-counting board in the recount, but that effort failed.

The Super Ali pins were available to poll workers in at least some precincts, according to a seasonal elections clerk who spoke with the Herald. Elections clerks oversee other poll workers at precincts.

The clerk, one of hundreds of poll workers who sign up to work during elections, said that while the Super Ali pins were in her packet to be distributed to other workers, she kept them in their envelope unused.

“We’re not supposed to wear political things on our person,” the clerk said. “It felt like a similar thing.”

At a combined cost of $2,720, the Super Ali materials wouldn’t even register as a rounding error in the Elections Department’s $49 million budget. And Garcia is hardly the first elected official to employ government resources to boost their public profile before voters.

During her 2024 reelection campaign, Miami-Dade’s Democratic mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, put her name on county buses. County commissioners have knocked on doors accompanied by police officers in the name of constituent services. Mobile service vehicles for the Miami-Dade Tax Collector’s Office feature jumbo images of Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez, a Republican who was also elected in 2024. When she was the state’s agriculture commissioner, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried put her photo on regulatory stickers attached to gas pumps.

The Elections Department coloring books made their debut in September on the department’s Instagram feed. The backpage has a “Dear Future Voter” letter from Garcia.

“I hope these pages inspire you to learn, participate and become a Guardian of Democracy,” she wrote.

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