Republican Firm Tied To Voter Fraud Allegations

[FarmerJohn]

October 2, 2012

Republicans around the country have been vocal in recent years about the need to crack down on voter fraud. And that's caused party officials to scramble to explain how a GOP firm could have been accused of submitting fake voter registrations in a number of Florida counties.

Transcript:

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. Congressional Democrats are looking into allegations that a Republican consulting firm committed voter registration fraud. The head of the company is an Arizona operative with a reputation for aggressive tactics, as NPR's Peter Overby reports.

PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee wants to talk to consultant Nathan Sproul. The Republican National Committee last week cut loose Sproul's company, Strategic Allied Consulting, after allegations of voter registration fraud turned up in four swing states where the firm was working for the Republican Party. Florida, North Carolina and Nevada have investigations underway. Sproul's attorney says he's advised Sproul not to give interviews and the lawyer himself declined to speak to NPR. A statement maintains that Strategic Allied Consulting has a zero tolerance policy and it fires contractors who violate the election laws. Republican committees paid the company nearly $3 million this year. Election law professor Rick Hasen at the University of California at Irvine recently published a book, "The Voting Wars." Noting the conservative campaign against voter fraud, he says fraud allegations in voter registration are fairly common. But aside from Nathan Sproul's company, Hasen says...

RICK HASEN: I've not heard of anyone either on the Democratic side or the Republican side where there were allegations that voter registration forms were actually destroyed intentionally.

OVERBY: And Sproul's various companies have a history of such allegations.

STEVE MAY: It's not the first time he's been under attack or where his tactics have been questioned.

OVERBY: Steve May is a former Arizona GOP legislator. He's known Sproul since the mid-1990s.

MAY: He wants to win elections. He gets paid to win elections, and that's what he does.

OVERBY: Among the various allegations over the years against Sproul and his companies: posing as a liberal voter registration group, posing as pollsters to screen out potential Democratic voters, and trashing Democratic registrations instead of turning them in. Some of these allegations have been investigated, but none has ever been prosecuted. In 2004, Sproul was working for the RNC, he also worked to get Ralph Nader on Arizona's presidential ballot presumably to draw off votes from Democrat John Kerry. Bob Grossfeld is a long-time Democratic consultant in Arizona.

BOB GROSSFELD: This is a fellow who knows where the line is, races right up to it, and occasionally just kicks dirt over it, to maybe cover it up a little bit.

OVERBY: And despite his hardball reputation, or maybe because of it, Nathan Sproul gets customers from the Republican Party and scrutiny from the Democrats. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162176990/republican-firm-tied-to-voter-fraud-allegations

 

[Jackpine Savage]

And the Republican party fired them. Still waiting for the Democrats to distance themselves from ACORN or whatever their name is now.

 

[FarmerJohn]

ACORN ceased to exist by 2010, despite

[Four different independent investigations by various state and city Attorneys General and the GAO released in 2009 and 2010 cleared ACORN, finding its employees had not engaged in criminal activities and that the organization had managed its federal funding appropriately, and calling the videos deceptively and selectively edited to present the workers in the worst possible light.]

Sproul and Strategic Allied Consulting are still open for business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now

 

[Jackpine Savage]

Nevada Judge Calls ACORN 'Reprehensible,' Slaps Group With Maximum Fine for Voter Fraud

"Mosley, reading the pre-sentence report, listed a series of voter registration fraud allegations against ACORN workers. He said that if the claims have been true, then "It is making a mockery of our election process. If I had an individual in this courtroom...who was responsible for this kind of thing, I would put that person in prison for 10 years, hard time, and not think twice about it," he said. "To me this is reprehensible. This is the kind of thing you see in some banana republic, Uruguay or someplace, not in the United States."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/10/judge-gives-maximum-and-fines-acorn-5000-for-illegal-voter-registration-scheme/

Former ACORN Worker Found Guilty of Election Fraud

http://www.doj.state.wi.us/absolutenm/templates/template_share.aspx?articleid=2165&zoneid=1

"Just In Time For Thanksgiving: ACORN Racks Up 15th Voter Fraud Conviction This Year"

http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/11/24/just-in-time-for-thanksgiving-acorn-racks-up-15th-voter-fraud-conviction-this-year/

 

[FarmerJohn]

So, do you think that Sproul will be shutting down Strategic Allied Consulting?

 

[Jackpine Savage]

I don't know. Do you think your buddies will ever quit funneling taxpayer money to the old ACORN groups?

http://spectator.org/blog/2011/06/30/obama-gives-new-grant-to-acorn

"Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave a $79,819 grant to the largest branch of the ACORN tree, ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC). AHC filed papers last year legally changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). It's the same old organization with a brand new ACORN-free name."

 

[Emcomus]

1 Thing I'm sure of, they better closely monitor the election results in PA...judge over ruled that you don't need to show your ID to vote. Kinda weird, we've been doing that in NY for aleast a decade.

 

[FarmerJohn]

NC Voter found party affiliation changed

BY CRAIG JARVIS - CJARVIS@NEWSOBSERVER.COM

RALEIGH -- New concerns over voter fraud surfaced on Wednesday.

A Raleigh woman’s party affiliation was changed without her knowledge from independent to Republican after a man who was apparently working with a Wake County GOP voter registration drive filled out a change-of-address form for her last month.

The N.C. Board of Elections is looking into the matter, along with another complaint involving a man registering voters at the same location.

The elections board is also investigating Strategic Allied Consulting, the company the Republican Party in North Carolina and several other states fired last week after it submitted questionable registration forms in Florida. There is no apparent connection between that firm and the incidents in Raleigh.

It’s not clear what the motive in Raleigh might have been, since party registration doesn’t matter in general elections as it does in primary elections. Also, the Wake GOP says it doesn’t pay its volunteers for registering voters, as some organizations do on a per-name basis.

But it does come amid heightened tensions over voter fraud and the national furor over the Republican firm’s registration forms.

“We can’t assess the enthusiastic volunteers as they go out and register voters,” said Luther Snyder, spokesman for the Wake County Republicans. “We can’t police each one of those. You don’t even have to be empowered by the party to go out and register people.”

Several weeks ago, Kelley DeAngelus, an attorney with the Wake County Public Defender’s office, approached a man at a table registering voters outside the courthouse in downtown Raleigh. She had recently moved from Durham to Raleigh, and asked whether he could register her under her new address.

She said he filled out a registration form with her name and address, and had her sign it. She left the party affiliation blank because that wasn’t changing. DeAngelus said she asked him whom he was affiliated with, and he replied the Republican Party, but assured her he could register anyone.

DeAngelus began checking for her new registration on the state Board of Elections website to make sure the paperwork went through and to find out her polling place. On Tuesday night it appeared – listing her as a registered Republican instead of independent.

“I was very upset about it,” DeAngelus said Wednesday. “Knowing this could happen to anyone, even when you’re informed about how to register, is really appalling. I’m glad I caught it and didn’t just show up to vote. I’m glad this wasn’t the primary.”

She complained to the Wake County Board of Elections, which traced her registration to a batch of several hundred forms submitted by the Wake County GOP, according to a chain of emails she provided to The News & Observer. The Wake board notified the state board, where investigator Marshall Tutor informed her someone had reported two weeks ago that a man generally matching that description in front of the courthouse had claimed to be working for the board of elections.

In the emails, Tutor said the state board was investigating Strategic Allied Consulting, and if that led to the identification of the man who registered her, he would be in touch with DeAngelus. He said the man “obviously violated the law” by changing her form after she signed it.

Earlier this week, state elections officials said they had notified local elections boards to scrutinize forms turned in by Strategic Allied Consulting. The officials couldn’t be reached Wednesday to discuss whether they had found any irregularities.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/10/04/2388569/voter-found-party-affiliation.html#storylink=cpy