Florida GOP shenanigans: when voter suppression just isn't enough!

[CountDeMoney]

Suspicious voter registration forms found in 10 Florida counties
By Matea Gold, Joseph Tanfani and Melanie Mason
The LA Times, September 28, 2012, 10:57 a.m.

WASHINGTON — Florida elections officials said Friday that at least 10 counties have identified suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by a firm working for the Republican Party of Florida, which has filed an election fraud complaint with the state Division of Elections against its one-time consultant.

The controversy in Florida -- which began with possibly fraudulent forms that first cropped up in Palm Beach County --  has engulfed the Republican National Committee, which admitted Thursday that it urged state parties in seven swing states to hire the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting.The RNC paid the company at least $3.1 million -- routed through the state parties of Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia -- to register voters and run get-out-the-vote operations. Wisconsin and Ohio had not yet paid the firm for get-out-the-vote operations it was contracted to do.

The RNC severed its ties to the firm Thursday after questions arose about the work Strategic Allied did in Palm Beach County, where election officials have turned over to prosecutors 106 voter registration forms submitted by one worker, some of which contained apparent forgeries and other problems.

Now elections officials across Florida are scrutinizing voter registration forms turned in to their counties on behalf of the state Republican Party. The state elections division is also investigating.

Florida GOP officials – who said they hired Strategic Allied at the request of the RNC – alleged in their complaint Thursday that the firm turned in forms with fake signatures and false information, said Chris Cate, spokesman for the Division of Elections, which will turn over its findings to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Assn. of Supervisors of Elections, said Friday that she had heard from elections officials in Lee, Bay, Clay, Santa Rosa, Escambia and Okaloosa counties who had also identified problematic voter registration forms turned in by the Florida GOP. Pasco County officials discovered possibly fraudulent forms during the Republican primary, Davis said.

Cate, the spokesman for the state elections division, said possibly fraudulent forms have also been reported in Miami-Dade and Duval, two of the state's most populous counties.

The number of suspicious voter registration applications was unusual, Davis said. "There might be an occasional one, but I don't think we've ever had this number of counties that have had this number of cases all at the same time," she said.

In Santa Rosa County, elections officials found 100 problematic voter registration applications out of a batch of roughly 400 turned in by the state Republican Party.

"Anyone with any sense would have known there was something wrong," said elections supervisor Ann W. Bodenstein.

Most were changes in current registrations filed in the names of real voters, but signatures were spelled differently than the applicants' names. Fake house numbers were given, and date of births did not match the names. The biggest red flag was that most of the forms were missing Social Security numbers.

"It was that flagrant," she said. "In no way did they look genuine."

Bodenstein said it appeared that whoever had been filling out the forms had been working off a database of voters that was at least four years old. She said she thought it was the work of "bottom of the totem pole" workers who were trying to reach a certain quota in order to be paid. Bodenstein reported the suspicious forms to the Office of the State Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit of Florida, which sent out investigators Thursday.

Bodenstein stressed that elections officials would strive to protect every vote.

"We will not disenfranchise anybody," she said.

But if fraudulent forms changing the addresses of actual voters are inadvertently processed, they could create obstacles at the polls. If someone's address is changed within the same county, they could still cast a ballot once poll workers were able to establish that the voter was in the correct precinct.

"It's another step the clerk, the poll worker and the voter would have to go through in order to cast a vote," Davis said.

Things would get more complicated if a voter's address has been changed to another county. If that were the case, the voter would be forced to cast a provisional ballot, which would be evaluated later in the week by a local canvassing board.

More than 2,000 provisional ballots were cast in Florida in 2008; less than half of those ballots were ultimately counted, according to University of Florida election law professor Daniel Smith.

Strategic Allied is run by an Arizona-based man named Nathan Sproul, who has been dogged by charges in the past that his employees destroyed Democratic registrations. No charges were ever filed.

But his reputation is such that when Sproul was tapped by the RNC to do field work this year, officials requested that he set up a new firm to avoid being publicly linked to the past allegations, Sproul told The Times. The firm was set up at a Virginia address, and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.

In an interview Thursday, Sproul blamed the problematic forms in Palm Beach on one individual and said his firm had offered to assist elections officials in identifying the problems in other counties.

[CountDeMoney]

But wait, there's more!  With video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rdk55dLsFhc
I'd fuck her. College freshmen. Probably doesn't have a clue what she's doing. 

Colo. girl registering 'only Romney' voters tied to firm dumped by RNC over fraud

DENVER – The Colorado Republican Party has terminated its contract with a firm hired to run voter registration and get-out-the-vote operations here after allegations of fraud, FOX31 Denver has confirmed.

The move came at the recommendation of the Republican National Committee, leading to the termination of contracts with Strategic Allied Consulting in seven swing states, following an investigation of voter fraud by the company in Florida.

"The Colorado Republican Party takes any threat to the voting process very seriously," said state GOP spokesman Justin Miller. "Following an alleged incident by an employee of Strategic Allied Consultants outside of Colorado we terminated our relationship."

In Colorado, the state GOP has spent $466,643 — roughly half its total budget — with Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm in question.

Already this year, the RNC has funneled more than $3.1 million to the company, just formed in June by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona voting consultant who has run other firms that have been accused of dumping registration forms filled out by Democrats and other improprieties aimed at helping Republican candidates.

And FOX31 Denver has confirmed that the young woman seen registering voters outside a Colorado Springs grocery store in a YouTube video, in which she admits to trying to only register voters who support Mitt Romney, was indeed a contract employee of Sproul's company.

"I'm actually trying to register people for a particular party," the girl tells a woman in the video, which has been viewed more than 417,000 times. Because we're out here in support of Romney, actually."

Strategic Allied Consulting was hired to do voter registration drives in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada, and had been planning get-out-the-vote drives in Ohio and Wisconsin, Sproul told the Los Angeles Times Thursday.

Reports from the Federal Election Commission show that Sproul's other company, Lincoln Strategy Group, has been paid more than $80,000 by the Romney campaign to help register voters between November 2011 and March 2012 during the GOP primary season.

Sproul told the Times he formed Strategic Allied Consulting at the request of the RNC for publicity's sake, given past negative media coverage of Lincoln stemming from past allegations going back to 2004, when employees in Nevada and Oregon signed up Democrats but threw out their forms instead of turning them in.

Sproul has also been linked to signature fraud this election cycle in his home state of Arizona where he was working on a ballot initiative that would allow the state to nullify any federal laws it finds to be unconstitutional.

In Florida, the state GOP fired Strategic Allied Consulting on Tuesday after election workers in Palm Beach County discovered numerous registration forms that appeared to be filled out in the same handwriting, some including wrong addresses and birthdays.

On Friday, the Times reported that at least 10 Florida counties have detected fraud in the forms turned in by Sproul's firm.

Miller told FOX31 Denver that no evidence of fraud has been detected in Colorado.

"We are not aware of any voter registration irregularities from our efforts to register voters," Miller said. "No issues have been reported by the county clerk and the Secretary of State regularly checks voter rolls for incidences of fraud."

Of course, the state has little way of knowing if some registration forms were filled out and then discarded.

[DGuller]

Speaking of Florida GOP, here's a fun story I came across by accident:  http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/timeline-david-rivera-corruption-allegations/story?id=17349663#.UGds6k3A8dc .  That guy makes Blagojevich look like an amateur.

[Razgovory]

No wonder they are concerned about fraud.  Thieves think everyone steals.

[Scipio]

It's on the same level as ACORN's shenanigans.  Shoot all those fucking apparatchiks, left, right, center.

[Razgovory]

No, first we killed all the lawyers.  If you are still around after that, you can make suggestions.

[Scipio]

No, first we killed all the lawyers.  If you are still around after that, you can make suggestions.

If it weren't for lawyers, you'd be locked up in a straightjacket, so I suggest you modulate your attitude stat.

[CountDeMoney]

He's got you there, Raz.

[merithyn]

It's on the same level as ACORN's shenanigans.  Shoot all those fucking apparatchiks, left, right, center.

Of course, the RNC went skitzo-nutzo over the ACORN debacle. Then, they turn around and hire a company KNOWN for voter registration fraud, asking them to change their name so the RNC won't be found out.

That's, actually, what pisses me off about this whole situation. It's the fucking hypocrisy of it. 

[Razgovory]

No, first we killed all the lawyers.  If you are still around after that, you can make suggestions.

If it weren't for lawyers, you'd be locked up in a straightjacket, so I suggest you modulate your attitude stat.

Incorrect.  I've never had a day in court and never needed to have a lawyer.  All my trips to the hospital were self admitted.

[Tonitrus]

Private companies/actors shouldn't be able to go around registering voters anyway.  If you want to vote, one should go to an appropriate state agency.

[Eddie Teach]

Of course, the RNC went skitzo-nutzo over the ACORN debacle. Then, they turn around and hire a company KNOWN for voter registration fraud, asking them to change their name so the RNC won't be found out.

That's, actually, what pisses me off about this whole situation. It's the fucking hypocrisy of it. 

While there's certainly plenty of hypocrisy in politics, I doubt Breitbart had anything to do with this. The people who did hire this company probably don't spend that much time in front of cameras.

[Valmy]

It's on the same level as ACORN's shenanigans.  Shoot all those fucking apparatchiks, left, right, center.

Yep that was exactly what I was thinking when I heard this story.

[The Brain]

Private companies/actors shouldn't be able to go around registering voters anyway.  If you want to vote, one should go to an appropriate state agency.

Why not just completely take away poor people's right to vote while you're at it?

[Martinus]

The silly part about the US voting registration system is that it essentially works as an opt-in and not an opt-out.

Why not keep the lists from the last elections and only require a new registration from people who want to change their polling station? Most people, especially the ones about whom there is always concern when it comes to voter registration (i.e. the old, the poor etc.), do not move so it seems wasteful to me that you are having the system geared towards the minority of people who change their place of residence between elections.