Romney Linked to Voter Registration Firm Accused of Fraud

Romney Linked to Voter Registration Firm Accused of Fraud; GOP Cuts Ties With 'Shady' Operation
By Brad Friedman
alternet.org

The North Carolina Republican Party has fired the shady voter registration firm owned by Mitt Romney's paid political consultant and longtime GOP operative, Nathan Sproul. The firing came as Democrats in the state were on the brink of denouncing the Republicans' tie to the operative's firm.

The state GOP joins the Republican Party of Florida, which also fired Sproul's company (who accounted for the party's largest 2012 expenditure, some $1.3 million over the last two months) after more than 100

apparently fraudulent voter registration forms were turned over to the FL State Attorney in Palm Beach County on Monday for investigation. The BRAD BLOG first reported the emerging story in detail on Tuesday .

The firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, is the latest creation of Sproul, a longtime, high-level GOP operative whose companies --- including Sproul & Associates and

Lincoln Strategy Group --- have been accused of destroying Democratic voter registration forms and changing information on them in election after election, in state after state, year after year. He was hired for similar operations by Bush/Cheney in '04, by McCain/Palin in '08 and by Mitt Romney's campaign late last year.

When the FL GOP fired Strategic Allied on Tuesday night, they noted that the firm had been hired "at the request of" the Republican National Committee. On Wednesday, during our exclusive interview with the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Election Susan Bucher , she described some of the "similarities in the signatures and certain characteristics in the applications that were very disturbing" on registration applications collected by Sproul's firm and turned in to her office. Among the "disturbing" defects on the forms, addresses of existing registered voters changed "to commercial buildings or addresses" and, "in some places, they were changing political parties."

Bucher stressed her concern that voters were likely to be disenfranchised by the effort when showing up at the polls on Election Day, only to find their address has been changed, removed or moved to another precinct entirely.

The firm is still said to be operating in key battleground states like Virginia, Nevada and Colorado, where a young lady who may have been working for the contractor was caught on a disturbing viral video tape published over the weekend. The young lady, who was hired by "a third-party contractor" retained by the Colorado State Republican Party, as their Communications Director confirmed to The BRAD BLOG on Wednesday, is seen on the tape asking a potential registrant whether she would vote for Obama or Romney before she would allow her to fill out a voter registration form.

When Gregg Flynn of BlueNC reported on Sproul's Strategic Allied Consulting in his state late last month, he reported the NC GOP had paid some $333,000 to the firm in July alone. He also discovered the company had taken steps to hide its ownership by Sproul's firm, Sproul & Associates, shortly after first publication of his initial exposé...



Mark Binker at North Carolina's WRAL is reporting today that NC GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood says, "The NCGOP takes any threat to the voting process very seriously. We have terminated our relationship with Strategic Allied Consultants." The spokesman also added that the state GOP claims to have no other vendor doing similar work in the state.

According to Binker, before the NC GOP fired Strategic Allied today, Democrats were preparing to release a statement decrying their involvement with the disreputable firm of Romney's paid political consultant, Sproul. The statement from Rep. Larry Hall was to have included:

North Carolina Republicans have spared no time or expense in their efforts to limit democracy and keep North Carolinians out of the democratic process. North Carolina is fortunate that Democrats fought against GOP efforts to pass discriminatory voter ID laws. Now Republicans are using this unethical and shady firm to try to get a leg up in this election ... I am calling on the North Carolina Republican Party to denounce this group and their shameful tactics and to immediately fire this firm.

On Tuesday night, The Nation's Lee Fang confirmed the company's operations on behalf of Republicans in Colorado, and unearthed a photo of Sproul and his wife taken at the George W. Bush White House during a Christmas party in 2006. Moreover, a Twitter user directed us to evidence that the firm is also operating in San Diego. Earlier this year, thousands of fraudulent voter registrations were turned into the Sacramento County, GOP in a $50,000 bounty scheme for Republican-only voter registrations . We have not yet been able to tie that scheme to Sproul's efforts.

Finally, for those who are just coming to this story, before you bother to equate Sproul's dirty work to anything a handful of ACORN's voter registration were accused (by ACORN!) of doing over the years, please read our original report on this matter which details how there is absolutely no comparison between those incidents and the explicit attempts to defraud the electoral system which Sproul's firms have been accused of doing in election after election. As Republican Congressman Chris Cannon noted, when highlight just some of the differences in the organizations during a 2009 hearing on voter suppression: "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."

So the reason that the GOP are busy trying to crack down on voter fraud is that they definitely know it's going on - because their people are doing it? :-P

Marconius wrote:

Miles1 wrote:So the reason that the GOP are busy trying to crack down on voter fraud is that they definitely know it's going on - because their people are doing it? :-P

http://www.truethevote.org/news/how-widespread-is-voter-fraud-2012-facts-figures

The law of conservation of politics: every conspiracy has an equal and opposite conspiracy: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/29/121029fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all

Hmmm, how to prove the guy next to me is a fraudulent voter when there is no way to even begin to check for fraudulency.

The inability to prove something does not mean that the something does not exist.

Example: Science itself
We know science exists, but you can't really prove it exists through its own rules(ie. the belief that the scientific method discovers truth can't be proven by the scientific method itself).

I have yet to hear one good reason why we have all these damn ID's here in tUSA to ensure that we are indeed who we say we are. We need them to drive, to cash a check, to get a loan, to work at terminal ports, to perform certain jobs, to fly......but a voter ID is somehow a taboo.

Mention voter ID......everything goes haywire like someone is proposing the end of the world. Why so whiny about it???

Gimme a good reason.

Marconius wrote:Hmmm, how to prove the guy next to me is a fraudulent voter when there is no way to even begin to check for fraudulency.

The inability to prove something does not mean that the something does not exist.

Example: Science itself

On the flip side, the inability to prove that something also does not mean that it does exist either. Like God :-P

I have yet to hear one good reason why we have all these damn ID's here in tUSA to ensure that we are indeed who we say we are. We need them to drive, to cash a check, to get a loan, to work at terminal ports, to perform certain jobs, to fly......but a voter ID is somehow a taboo.

Mention voter ID......everything goes haywire like someone is proposing the end of the world. Why so whiny about it???

Gimme a good reason.

Well, one reason that seems to be coming out of this whole "voter fraud" thing is that it seems to be targeting certain demographics - like say the law saying you need a drivers license as ID when poor people wouldn't have a car and so wouldn't have a license. And the certain demographics that seem to be most affected by whatever voter id laws are coming in happen to be the ones that generally tend to vote for the opposing party to the one that is bringing in the laws. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have ID to vote, you should, but it should be an ID that is available to everyone (and a drivers license isn't available to everyone - you have to pass a drivers test first). Over here you need a government-issued ID to vote, which is a drivers license or a passport. I guess the difference is that pretty much everyone of voting age has a passport at least (one of the joys of being a small island, you need one)....

Miles1 wrote:

Well, one reason that seems to be coming out of this whole "voter fraud" thing is that it seems to be targeting certain demographics - like say the law saying you need a drivers license as ID when poor people wouldn't have a car and so wouldn't have a license. And the certain demographics that seem to be most affected by whatever voter id laws are coming in happen to be the ones that generally tend to vote for the opposing party to the one that is bringing in the laws. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have ID to vote, you should, but it should be an ID that is available to everyone (and a drivers license isn't available to everyone - you have to pass a drivers test first). Over here you need a government-issued ID to vote, which is a drivers license or a passport. I guess the difference is that pretty much everyone of voting age has a passport at least (one of the joys of being a small island, you need one)....

Not even close to a good excuse.
First, we know that the poor in tUSA have much more than the poor elsewhere. They may not have a job, but they have houses, cars, cell phones, satellite TV, etc. They have an ID.....they need it to cash that government check. Hell, they need it just to apply for government help or to get those "earned income credits". So yeah, they have access to ID's.
Second, it is legal for illegal aliens to get drivers license in many states. Driver's license is all that is required, if anything is required. So if it is legally possible for someone who cannot legally vote, to get the only ID required to vote....well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the possible end result.
Thirdly, do we really think these poor, that are used as an example of why we shouldn't do this, are gonna have to pay for theirs??? We would be fools to think the government wouldn't supply these people with the ID. I mean the poor not being able to afford it isn't a concern in other issues like manditory school unis.

So no, using the poor excuse is not an excuse. It is just smoke. So much smoke in fact: the Dems vastly support a Federal ID system, but oppose this....staggering really, but that is another topic alltogether.